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TALKS WITH T. R. 




THE ROOSEVELT OF THi: PKICI'AREDNESS CAMPAIGN 



TALKS WITH 

T. R. 

FROM THE DIARIES OF 

JOHN J. LEARY, JR. 

With Illustrations 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

The Riverside Press Cambridge 
1920 



COPYRIGHT, I9I9 AND I92O, BV THE MoCLURE PUBLICATIONS, INCORPORATED 
COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY JOHN J. LEAKY, JR. 

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



-^.6^0 



O)CI.A570329 



JUN -5 1920 



TO 

THE MEMORY OF MY PARENTS 
JOHN JOSEPH AND MARY CRONIN LEARY 

NATIVES OF IRELAND, WHO LIVED AND DIED 

lOO PER CENT AMERICANS 

THIS LITTLE BOOK IS 

AFFECTI ON ATELY 

DEDICATED 



PREFACE 

RIDING across Indiana shortly before his death, 
_ Colonel Roosevelt began a brief discussion of 
the manner in which tradition and some historians 
had treated Washington and Lincoln. 

The talk was predicated on Barnard's statue of 
the emancipator, then the subject of much discus- 
sion. The paper he held in his hand referred to 
the controversy and he voiced annoyance that any 
person could think of portraying "Lincoln as a 
clod." 

"Lincoln to me," said he, "has always been a liv- 
ing person, an inspiration and a help. I have always 
felt that if I could do as he would have done were he 
in my place, I would not be far from right. And at 
times when I have been troubled by some public 
question, I have tried to imagine Lincoln in my posi- 
tion and to do as he would have done. 

"I do not understand," he went on, "why some 
persons like to portray Lincoln as rude and uncouth 
— to suggest that he was a lineal descendant of the 
Pithecanthropus, always telling funny stories. It is 
as bad as the refining process Washington has gone 



viii PREFACE 

through. Washington was a ver>' human sort of per- 
son with a fair share of the weakness of man. He is 
presented to us as possessing all of the virtues and 
lacking all suggestion of sin, original and acquired. 
As a matter of fact, he was a strong man, with all 
of a strong man's virtues and many of a strong man's 
faults, who lived in an age when it was not bad form 
to offer the minister a drink. 

"Lincoln was not a handsome man — he did not 
have very much on me in that respect — but he was 
by no means first cousin to the cave man in appear- 
ance any more than he was always slapping stran- 
gers on the back and telling them funny stories. He 
did have the saving grace of humor, but he was no 
clown. 

"In my ofhce in the White House there was a splen- 
did portrait of Lincoln. Ofttimes, when I had some 
matter to decide, something involved and difficult 
to dispose of, where there were conflicting rights 
and all that sort of thing, I would look up at that 
splendid face and try to imagine him in my place 
and try to figure out what he would do in the cir- 
cumstances. 

"It may sound odd to you, but, frankly, it seemed 
to make my troubles easier of solution. Yes, to me, 
Lincoln has ever been a living person, an inspiration 
and a help. If I ever envied any man, it was John 



PREFACE ix 

Hay, who had the wonderful privilege of knowing 
Lincoln so intimately. 

"Lincoln must be — will be always — a living 
thing to our people, an inspiration and a landmark, 
to the living and to those yet to live. Our danger lies 
in the fact that at times our public men are inclined 
to stray from the path he blazed, if, indeed, some of 
them ever trod it." 

It had been my habit to transcribe carefully in my 
notebooks these informal talks with the Colonel. Un- 
til this little talk, through which ran a note almost 
wistful and that all but expressed the hope that he, 
in turn, would not be caricatured or whitewashed, 
my idea as to what I would do with them was vague. 
Eventually, I half thought, the notebooks and their 
contents might find a resting-place, perhaps, in Har- 
vard College Library, where in after years the stu- 
dent, seeking material for theme or thesis, might find 
something of value. 

After Colonel Roosevelt's death a year ago, in the 
days that followed, my thoughts recurred to that 
day in the Pullman diner riding across Indiana. It 
then became clear that, instead of trusting to chance 
and the years that these talks might be given the 
public after the Roosevelt tradition had become 
fixed, the time is now while the tradition is in a state 
of flux. 



X PREFACE 

Hence this little book, offered to the public in the 
hope that it will help those who were not privileged 
above their fellows in knowing him in the flesh, to 
visualize and know the real Theodore Roosevelt. 

John J. Leary, Jr. 

New York City 

January i, 1920 



CONTENTS 

Roosevelt AND 1920 i 

Dewey and Fighting Bob ii 

Why Alger escaped Criticism 15 

The Charley Thompson Club 16 

How I LOST My Eye 19 

The Drink Story 22 

The Break with Taft 25 

The Attempt on his Life 30 

Why Two Politicians failed 32 

Clashes with the Kaiser 40 

That Gary Dinner 45 

The Colonel and Judge Hughes 52 

His a Simple Creed 65 

His Hold on the Public 70 

That Golden Special 75 

On Election Eve, 1916 76 

Perkins and T. R. 79 

A Cabinet that never was 86 

Senator Lodge's Fist Fight 88 

Roosevelt's One Talk with Mr. Wilson 93 

"The Division" 100 

The Colonel and John L. Sullivan 118 

The Newspaper Cabinet . 123 

Children of the Crucible 143 

Roosevelt on Labor 151 

"One Purple Night" 160 

Devil-Fishing 166 

A Varied Reading Diet 173 

"Trying to kill me" 175 



xii CONTENTS 

Loyalty i77 

Germans in America i8o 

Playing the Game I94 

Making up with Taft 198 

Money-Grubbers 206 

New Blood in the G. O. P. 210 

Speed on the Trigger 214 

Root, Most Valued of Counsellors 217 

With the Allies' Envoys 222 

Police and Citizenship 226 

Colonel Roosevelt on Boys 233 

His Boys' Critics 239 

Our Soldier Dead in France 246 

Making Peace with Gompers 251 

Henry Ford and Mark Hanna 256 

A Tribute to Nurses 259 

Woman in Office 263 

The New York Fight of 1918 267 

Home Folk 270 

The Value of Masonry 275 

Hitting the Back Trail 278 

On Heredity 280 

On Remembering Friend and Foe 283 

'• Well-Meaning Fools " 287 

On College Life 289 

On Prohibition 291 

Pershing and Wood 296 

Fondness for the Khaki Lad 300 

On Being Sixty 3^4 

The Colonel and the Treaty 307 

England and the Rest of the World 31 1 

Mr. Wilson's "Ideals" 323 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

The Roosevelt of the Preparedness Campaign 

Frontispiece 
A Chicago snapshot. Friends of Roosevelt have called this 
the best picture of him taken in the closing years of his life. 

Facsimile of a Letter of Roosevelt's recommending 
THE Author to the Military Intelligence Sec- 
tion, U.S.A. I 

A Weighty Matter 36 

In the Supreme Court at Syracuse 60 

En Route for the Tropics 88 

Prominent Members of the "Newspaper Cabinet" 124 

Photograph taken at Sagamore Hill, June, 1916, showing 
Charles Divine, New York Sun; Rodney Bean, New York 
Times; Edward Moier, Associated Press; John W. Slaght, 
New York World; Napoleon A. Jennings, New York Herald; 
William Hoster, New York American. 

Of these, Jennings was associated with the Colonel from his 
days in the Assembly, while Slaght dated from the Police Com- 
mission days. The latter has an interesting explanation as to how 
the Colonel and his Rough Riders came to receive the news- 
paper attention they got in the Spanish War. 

"While the army was assembling in Tampa," he says, "we all 
sent reams of stuff to our papers, telling of the arrival of troops, 
the generals, and all that sort of thing. When the papers arrived 
back we found the blue pencil of the censor had deleted about 
everything except the date lines. In this emergency a confer- 
ence was called. It had degenerated into a lodge of sorrow, when 
Jimmy Hare, the war photographer, who was sitting on a table 
swinging his legs, had a happy thought. 

" ' You are up against it and you might as well realize it now as 
any other time. I know censors. If you want copy, why don't 
you take up this Roosevelt outfit? He's a New Yorker, he's got 
a picturesque crowd that will make good copy, and the censor 
will let you go as far as you like.' 

"It was a life-saver. That night the wires were loaded with 
Rough Rider copy. Thus, by a strange kink of fate, regular army 
officers, who have always protested against the prominence 
given Roosevelt in the war, were themselves directly responsible 
for that prominence." — J. J. L., Jr. 



xlv ILLUSTRATIONS 

Scientists at Work and on Parade: Colonel Roose- 
velt AND Dr. Russell J. Coles dressed for Devil- 
Fishing AND IN Academic Gowns i68 
By courtesy of Dr. Russell J. Coles 
In Barbados 200 
The Colonel and his Son Kermit 234 
Colonel Roosevelt and Dr. Mason examining 

Shrapnel which wounded Archie Roosevelt 244 

With his Secretary, William Loeb, Jr., on the 
Mayflower at a Naval Review 264 

Photograph by N. W. Penfield, New York. 

" Billy," as the Colonel called him, filled a very large place 
in the Roosevelt term in the White House. In after years this 
intimacy continued, Colonel Roosevelt placing large value on his 
judgment of men and things and his unselfish loyalty. — J . J . L. , Jr. 

In Utah 292 

Thinking it Over 324 

Except as otherwise indicated, the illustrations, including the 
frontispiece, are from photographs supplied by the Sun and 
New York Herald. 



TALKS WITH T. R. 



[ FACSIMILE ] 
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TALKS WITH T. R. 

• 

ROOSEVELT AND 1920 

ALL that is near to me in the male line is in 
^ France. If they do not come back, what is the 
Presidency to me? 

" If they do come back, and the Republican Party 
wants me, and I can see where, by accepting the 
nomination, I can advance the ideals for which I 
stand, I will be a candidate. But I will not Hft my 
finger to secure the nomination." 

That was Colonel Theodore Roosevelt's position 
as expressed to me in June of 191 8, when it began to 
appear that nothing could prevent his nomination. 
It was his position in December, when, convales- 
cing from rheumatism, he talked politics with me 
in Roosevelt Hospital. I had remarked that it had 
begun to look as though he would be nominated by 
acclamation. 

"That may be," said he, " but if I am, I will ac- 
cept only because I see where as President I can do 
things, can advance those ideals for which all right- 
thinking Americans stand. And if I accept, it will be 
because the platform is one hundred per cent Ameri- 



a TALKS WITH T. R. 

can. Nothing less would induce me to consider the 
nomination for a single minute. 

"To be President is an honorable and commend- 
able ambition in any man. I have been President. 
Per se it would mean nothing to me to be President 
again. Its only value would be in what I could do, 
what I could accomplish." 

This was substantially his position in 191 6 when, 
it will be remembered, the issue at the Republican 
Convention in Chicago was Roosevelt or Hughes, 
and the Republican Convention deadlocked with the 
Progressives on this point; a deadlock broken by 
Colonel Roosevelt's declination to run as a Progres- 
sive and his declaration that he believed it his duty 
and the duty of all Americans, who felt as he did, 
to support Justice Hughes. 

With Judge Hughes's nomination, Colonel Roose- 
velt abandoned, temporarily at least, any thought 
of again running for the Presidency. Two days before 
the decision of the voters for Mr. Wilson over Mr. 
Hughes, my notebook says, he declared he would be 
out of it in four years. 

"We can," I remarked, after he had bemoaned 
the probable reelection of Mr. Wilson, "look forward 
to 1920. There will be nothing to it then but Roose- 
velt. No one can stop it." 

"You are wrong there," he answered. "This was 



ROOSEVELT AND 1920 3 

my year — 1916 was my high twelve. In four years 
I will be out of it. This was my year to run. I did not 
want to run in 191 2. Circumstances compelled me 
to run then. This year it was different. This was my 
year." 

"Colonel," said I, " I know that many things may 
happen in four years, but I also know that every- 
where I go it is the one thing: 'If they had only 
named Roosevelt.*" 

"True," he countered, "but don't you see that 
you are merely proving what I say — this was my 
year to run. I have no doubt the mass of the people 
wanted me to run. The gang did not. To beat me 
they had to take Hughes — they hated him only in 
a lesser degree than they hated me." 

Following the defeat of Judge Hughes he made no 
effort toward securing the 1920 nomination, for him- 
self or any other man. His efforts were directed first, 
last, and all of the time to bringing the Republican 
Party and its leaders around to what he believed to 
be the real American ideals and needs of the hour, 
and to make the party the instrument through 
which the real will of the American people might be 
registered and the ancient landmarks defended. 

If, in doing this, the party should nominate him, 
well and good. If the nomination went to another, 
well and good, provided that other was one hun- 



4 TALKS WITH T. R. 

dred per cent American and dependable in his 
Americanism. 

" It was," he said to me early in 1916, "the neces- 
sity of saving the Union that called the Republican 
Party into being. It accomplished that purpose, and 
for many years governed the country wisely and 
well. Then it became fat, and soft, and lazy. It ceased 
to be the party of all of the people and it has been 
punished for its sins. 

"Now another crisis is at hand. The danger to our 
institutions is as great to-day as it was in 1861. Then 
we faced disunion. Now we face disgrace and worse. 
The party now in power is the same party the people, 
acting through the Republican Party, hurled from 
power in i860. It is as unfit to govern this country 
now as it was then; it is just as sectional and it is 
fully as inefficient. The only difference is this: in 
i860 the country was facing war and the Democrats 
deliberately and criminally did their best to so 
arrange matters that it would not be ready for war, 
while now, with the country facing war, it is doing 
nothing to prepare for war. 

"In the one case it was criminal intent, in the 
other it is congenital inefficiency; in one instance 
they were crooked, in the present case they are 
foolish. The results to the country will be the same. 

"The Democratic Party cannot wreck the coun- 



ROOSEVELT AND 1920 5 

try, but it can do damage that a generation won't be 
able to repair. Under Mr. Wilson's leadership it is 
backing us into war stern foremost. There are men 
in his party that see the danger, that feel as we do, 
but they are helpless. There is no hope for the 
country in that party. 

"If, when we finally get into the war, formally 
and officially as we now are unofficially, and the 
Democratic Party happens to be in power, it will be 
just as inefficient in war as it is in peace. 

"The hope of the country is in the Republican 
Party. Through it the mass of the people will have 
to work, will express their real opinions. 

"The mass of the people are all right. Just now 
they are suffering from a false sense of security into 
which they have been lulled by sweet words and 
beautiful phrases. They will be, they must be awak- 
ened. And when they are awake they must turn to 
the Republican Party for leadership, for there is none 
in the other party. They will turn to it when they 
realize the needs of real preparedness and the plight 
they face through false leadership. 

"For that reason, and that reason only, I am 
interested in party politics. I would not give a snap 
of my finger for the nomination. I would take the 
nomination only because of the chance to do things, 
were I again President, that must be done." 



6 TALKS WITH T. R. 

With this background it is easy to see why, fol- 
lowing the defeat of Justice Hughes in 191 6 he began 
a campaign to bring all wings of the Republican 
Party together. 

This campaign began the last Saturday of the 
1916 campaign. It began in Bridgeport where the 
Colonel closed his speaking tour, with a whole- 
hearted appeal for the election of Mr. Hughes. 
Incidentally it is worth noting here that it was 
Bridgeport's big vote (Bridgeport is the chief city 
of Fairfield County) which saved Connecticut to 
the Republicans and made California's vote so all- 
important. 

After this meeting Colonel Roosevelt went to the 
Stratfield Hotel where John T. King, the Republican 
National Committeeman, had a light supper waiting. 
King had been anti-Roosevelt, but had come around 
to Mr. Roosevelt's way of thinking, and between 
bites of supper the two talked organization. 

"I am not against the organization and never 
have been against it because it was a party organi- 
zation," he declared, "but I have been against it 
because it was an organization for private plunder. 
That is what I am against. 

"You have the right idea here — taking the 
working-men into the organization and making it a 
popular institution in which the idea of social justice 



ROOSEVELT AND 1920 7 

for all is uppermost. It is a splendid idea, that of 
insisting that the man who takes a place in the 
organization must quit drinking and start a savings- 
bank account. 

" I want to see that sort of an organization every- 
where — an organization where the workers and the 
small farmers sit in and really belong. That sort of 
an organization will not stand for plunder. It will 
stand for what is right and decent in public life. 
You can call such an organization a machine if you 
will and I '11 still approve of it. Calling it a machine 
will not make it offensive to me. A machine is just 
as necessary for successful party work, for a party 
to serve the public, as organization is in the army 
or in a bank. 

"I have no quarrel with any man who has been 
in the organization for what he has done in the past 
if he's straight now. There are a good many things 
everybody sees are improper now that only a few 
thought were improper a short time back. It's like 
the lottery — Harvard College and many of your 
old churches about here were financed by lotteries 
in the old days. Times have changed. 

"If the organization is straight, runs straight, if 
its leaders and the men in it run straight, I have no 
objection to it. I will work with it just so long as it is 
straight and I won't worry over the possibility that 



8 TALKS WITH T. R. 

some of its members have not always held as high 
views as they do now." 

"Well," laughed King, "that would let Barnes 

• >> 
m. 

"By Godfrey!" exclaimed the Colonel, " I '11 work 
even with Barnes if he's working for the public good. 
Yes, I '11 even take Barnes in when he is ready to run 
straight and so long as he is working for the party 
and the people, and not for Barnes." 

"If we had known you as well before Chicago as 
we do now," remarked King, "Connecticut would 
have been in a different position there." 

The Colonel laughed, asked more questions about 
King's methods which had made Bridgeport a ban- 
ner Republican city, and the local situation gener- 
ally. 

"I like King," he told me afterwards. "He has 
the right idea of organization — clean men, close to 
the people, with the working-men well up to the 
front and in front if they have the ability to get 
there. Organizations like that won't go wrong." 

This conversation not long after resulted by Mr. 
King becoming the closest of Colonel Roosevelt's 
political advisers. Through King he worked for the 
reorganization of the Republican National Commit- 
tee which made Will H. Hays, of Indiana, National 
Chairman. King was his choice for that place, but 



ROOSEVELT AND 1920 9 

when on the eve of the St. Louis meeting of Febru- 
ary, 191 8, at which Hays was chosen, it became 
evident King would have to fight for the place, the 
Colonel advised him to keep out. 

"The place is not worth a fight," he advised, ** es- 
pecially where there is so much at stake." 

This was his last political act before the serious 
operations which brought him to the doors of death 
that winter. He was semi-convalescent when he was 
told of Hays's election and insisted on wiring him 
immediately. He saw Hays before he was out of bed 
and he was much impressed with him. 

"Hays," he told me before leaving the hospital, 
"is a trump. He is all right. He may make mistakes, 
but he won't make many. The party seems to be 
united on him and that's something well worth 
while. Now we 've got to back him up. With Hays at 
work and on the job, I think we'll get results. For 
one thing, there's only one party now. Most of the 
Progressives have come back. Most of the others 
will follow. Those that won't return would sooner or 
later have quit even the Progressive Party — they 're 
just natural-born Mavericks who won't stay long in 
any herd, and won't stay branded. 

"Hays will, I'm sure, weld the party firmly to- 
gether. The day of factions has gone. But we have 
all got to help him." 



lo TALKS WITH T. R. 

Colonel Roosevelt's desire to help sent him to 
Maine a few weeks after he left the hospital to ad- 
dress the state convention. He had bullied his doc- 
tors into a reluctant consent, had a "bully time," 
and came back confident the trip was worth while. 

"It looks more and more like Roosevelt in 1920," 
I told him on his return. 

"I'm not so sure about that," said he. "I don't 
know that Roosevelt will care to be a candidate in 
1920. He certainly will not be if he has to scramble 
for it, and he won't take the nomination if it 's handed 
him on a silver platter, unless he sees where by 
accepting he can be of real service, can do real things. 

"Otherwise — you couldn't drag me into an 
acceptance." 

"I don't believe you'll have to scramble for it; 
there will be a chance to do things and there won't 
be any doubt as to the platform — all of your con- 
ditions will be met," I replied. 

"In that case," he replied, "I'll have to run, but 
remember this : almost anything can happen between 
now and 1920." 



DEWEY AND FIGHTING BOB 

TWO of the brightest chapters in America's 
brilliant naval history deal with Dewey in 
Manila Bay and the battleship cruise around the 
world. For Dewey's presence in Manila Bay, Roose- 
velt was responsible — he had, in fact, as Assistant 
Secretary of the Navy, to battle with bureau chiefs 
to send him there — thereby breaking precedent 
much as he did later in sending Rear Admiral 
"Fighting Bob" Evans on the famous battleship 
cruise. 

Dewey he sent to Asia on the chance that he would 
have to fight, and Evans, prepared to fight, left with 
President Roosevelt his pledge that were there a fight 
he would come home as Dewey did — or not at all. 

There has been much mystery and some dispute 
as to the orders under which Evans sailed. What his 
written orders may have been I do not know. But 
here is Colonel Roosevelt's story of his last interview 
with Evans before "he shoved off" on that memo- 
rable voyage. 

"I said to Evans," said Colonel Roosevelt in dis- 
cussing the matter, " * Admiral, I am very fond of 
you, but if you or your ships are surprised in port 
or at sea, don't come back to me. 



12 TALKS WITH T. R. 

'"You are going on a mission of peace, to see that 
the peace is kept, but from the time that you lift 
anchor in the roads until you return, guard your 
ships as though you were at war. 

"'Seek no trouble; take no chances; don't be sur- 
prised.* 

" Evans stood looking me straight in the eye while 
I was talking. 

'"Mr. President,' said he, 'Mr. President, if I am 
surprised, I won't come back.' 

"And I don't believe he would have. 

"The situation was serious and Evans knew it 
nearly if not quite as well as I. There was one chance 
in ten that the trip would end in war. I decided to 
take the nine chances that it would prevent the war 
that seemed certain, was certain, if strong measures 
were not taken to prevent it. 

"I was talking softly to Japan and, in the fleet, 
was letting it see my big stick. 

' ' Evans was the man to handle the fleet. He was 
worth a couple of battleships both for the moral 
effect on his men and the knowledge of the rest of 
the world that he was not called 'Fighting Bob' for 
nothing. I knew that he did not want to fight — your 
first-class fighting man never looks for fight — I 
knew that he could be depended upon not to pick a 
fight, but, by George! I knew, and Japan knew, that 



DEWEY AND FIGHTING BOB 13 

if occasion demanded he could fight and would 
fight. 

"Can you imagine Mr. Wilson taking such a 
course?" 

Of Dewey as a fighting man Colonel Roosevelt 
had the very highest regard, but he also realized that 
like most other mortals, Dewey had his limitations. 

"As a fighting man, as a man on the bridge or in 
the conning tower, Dewey had no superior," he once 
told me. "He was everything the traditions demand 
an American sailor-man shall be. But take him off 
his quarter-deck and set him in a swivel chair and he 
was lost — he was only slightly better than Crown- 
inshield. 

"Crowninshield, you know, did not wish Dewey 
sent to command the Asiatic squadron. He insisted 
that it was not Dewey's turn — that some one else 
should go, because, in the course of ordinary routine, 
the other man should go. I knew what Dewey was 
— a fighting man of the Farragut type and just as 
capable as his old commander of saying, * Damn the 
torpedoes, full speed ahead.' He proved it by cutting 
the cable after he had done his main job. 

"It was because I believed he was the right man 
for the job that I sent him to the East over the 
bureau's protest, and it was because I knew he was 
a first-class man in a fight that I sent him to South- 



14 TALKS WITH T. R. 

ern waters when it looked as though we might have 
to mix it up with Germany a few years later. When 
Germany realized that I meant business, she quit, 
but if she had n't, Dewey would have given as good 
an account of himself there as he had in Manila Bay. 

"Between ourselves, the old man was rather keen 
for the chance at Germany. He recognized, as did 
few men of his time, what Germany and German 
policies really were and what Germany meant to try 
and do to the world. 

"On the other hand, I saw his limitations when a 
dispute arose between him and General Wood as to 
the place where fortifications should be built to 
defend Manila. Wood objected that the place fa- 
vored by the navy, and, of course, by Dewey, could 
not be defended by the army. I sent for the admiral 
and put the thing up to him. He listened, shrugged 
his shoulders, and, in effect asked, 'What of it?' 

"So long as it could be defended by the navy and 
fitted in with the navy's scheme of things, he did not 
care. He lacked the necessary breadth, the necessary 
imagination to size the entire problem — to get the 
other fellow's viewpoint. 

"However, as things developed, both were wrong, 
for the Japs before long had guns that would have 
made the place picked by the army untenable." 



WHY ALGER ESCAPED CRITICISM 

STUDENTS of Spanish War history may recall 
that however much Colonel Roosevelt may have 
criticized other War Department officials at that 
time, General Russell A. Alger, then Secretary of 
War, was one of those who escaped. There was a 
reason for this — the T. R. policy of a lifetime of 
sticking, wherever it was humanly possible, to a 
friend. 

*'Some persons may have wondered," he remarked 
one day, "why it was I never criticized General 
Alger. The explanation is simple: whenever I found 
myself up against some foolish bureau chief whose 
love for red tape would block me in fitting out my 
regiment, I 'd go to Alger and he 'd give me what I 
wanted. Thus, I wanted modern rifles using smoke- 
less powder. The then chief of ordnance advised that 
I take the old-fashioned Springfield using black 
powder. He said the smoke would hide us from the 
enemy. 

" I could not convince him this was bad judgment, 
so I went to Alger. He fixed us up immediately. That 
is why you never heard of my saying anything 
against the old General. 

"Anyway, others said quite enough." 



THE CHARLEY THOMPSON CLUB 

SO far as I know, Colonel Roosevelt never in- 
dulged in cards. He did not, however, object to 
others doing so. "I am not bigoted in the matter" 
was his way of putting it. One of his standing jokes 
had to do with the proneness of some of his news- 
paper friends to "kill" a little time playing poker. 

Frequently a local committeeman boarding the 
Colonel's train before his city was reached, would, 
after the social amenities had been attended to, ask 
where the newspaper men were, or for some indi- 
vidual correspondent. 

"I do not know," the Colonel would say, "but I 
suspect they are attending a meeting of the Charley 
Thompson Finger Club." 

"And what is that?" the committeeman would 
ask. 

"It is," the Colonel would answer, "a very exclu- 
sive organization devoted to the study of financial 
problems, psychology, and the relative and varying 
values of certain pieces of paper. In a word, it is a 
poker club. At least they say they play poker. Some 
say they only play at poker. 

"It had its start in this way. On one of my trips 
some years ago, Charley Thompson, of the Times 



THE CHARLEY THOMPSON CLUB 17 

(New York), cut a finger rather badly opening a 
bottle of mucilage. That evening after dinner the 
boys sat around talking over the events of the day. 
After a while one arose, stretched himself, and said 
he guessed he'd go back to see how Charley Thomp- 
son's finger was getting along. Soon another, then 
another, went back to see about Thompson's finger, 
until I was left alone. By this time I had become a 
bit sympathetic and decided that I, too, should look 
in on the invalid. 

"They were all there playing poker — Charley 
Thompson included. Thereafter when the boys all 
disappeared and remained quiet for any consider- 
able period, I always felt it safe to assume the 
Charley Thompson Finger Club was in session, 
though its founder might be hundreds of miles 
away." 

Sometimes the Colonel would look in on a "meet- 
ing" to joke the boys about their progress or to 
extend mock sympathy to the stranger they might 
have taken in. There was no rule as to the size of 
the game, nothing approaching a dictum from the 
Colonel as to what the limit should or should not be, 
but it was always small. For this, there was a reason. 
Instinctively the boys knew that the Colonel would 
not like to hear of a large limit game — of anything 
approaching real gambling by any of his party. So 



1 8 TALKS WITH T. R. 

they refrained from high play just as they refrained 
from carrying Hquor with them. 

Once, I beHeve, some one, more venturesome, or 
less well acquainted with the Colonel than the rest, 
did arrange for a liberal stock of stimulants being 
placed aboard the train. The Colonel did not say 
very much. That little, I believe, he said to one man. 
The balance of the trip was " dry " so far as the train, 
at least, was concerned. 

The Colonel would not quarrel with or attempt to 
say to any of his party that he should not take a 
drink if he felt so inclined, or pack a flask in his lug- 
gage, but he did object to anything that by twist 
of the imagination might be considered a drinking 
orgy or the making of one. It was not his idea of the 
thing to do. 



HOW I LOST MY EYE 

I DID not realize it was news until I saw the papers 
yesterday. I rather supposed most people knew 
I had lost the sight of one eye." 

Colonel Roosevelt was a bit amazed and somewhat 
puzzled by the prominence given this fact one Mon- 
day morning after he had talked with a group of 
reporters at Jack Cooper's health farm, near Stam- 
,, ford, Connecticut, where he had gone to take off 
^1 some surplus weight. The reporters he had bidden 
there more, I am sure, to do something for his friend 

(Cooper by securing him a lot of publicity than any- 
thing else, though he had, as a matter of fact, half 
promised that he would have something to say be- 
fore leaving the place when he went there. 

"You knew it, did you not?" he asked. 

"Yes, sir," I answered; "you told me about it one 
night on a train going West. Yoder (of the U. P.) 
and Reggie Post were in the party." 

"I thought so," said he. 

My notebook tells me that his story as to how he 
lost the use of the left eye was led up to by a question 
of the Colonel's as to a rumor about his being in poor 
health then going the rounds. 

"What do they say I have?" he inquired. 



ao TALKS WITH T. R. 

' * Arterlo-sclerosis. ' * 

"Just what is that?" 

"A hardening of the walls of the arteries — a loss 
of elasticity in the blood vessels." 

"Well, on that definition they are right. I have 
had arterio-sclerosis for a long time. Ever since I 
was about forty, I have had to cut out violent exer- 
cises one after the other until now there is nothing 
left except what a grandfather might expect. 

"When I was Governor it was delightful to note 
the refusal of the Comptroller to audit a bill for a 
wrestling mat for the Executive Mansion. He could 
understand perfectly why a gentleman should wish 
a billiard table, but a wrestling mat for a Governor! 
It was inconceivable. 

"I did not wrestle so much after that. My first 
man, a middle-weight champion, knew enough to 
take care of himself and me, too. I forget his name. 
He had to quit and his successor was an oarsman 
who could neither look out for himself nor for me. 
The result was that one bout ended with the smash- 
ing of one of his knees and I had a loose rib or two. 

"I used to like to box, but I had to stop when I 
hurt my left eye in the White House. You know it is 
blind; a loss, but not nearly as bad as if it were the 
right one. It happened this way: I was boxing with 
a naval officer, a husky chap and a cousin of Mrs. 



HOW I LOST MY EYE ai 

Roosevelt. He countered a hot one on the side of the 
head — right over the eye. One of the hardening 
arteries ruptured. Then the eye gradually began to 
film over. Soon all the sight was gone. That 's how I 
lost it. 

''So far as I know the officer never learned the 
result of his blow. To have told him would have only 
caused him to feel badly." 

After the publicity following his statement at 
Jack Cooper's, Colonel Roosevelt again referred to 
the fact that he had kept the extent of his injury 
secret from his boxing partner. 

"The only man I ever tried to keep that story 
away from was the young officer. It would have 
worried him to death. 

"By the way," he added, with a laugh, "did you 
notice how quickly it is announced that Mr. Wilson, 
too, has but one eye. Of course, he did not lose it in 
any such vulgar way as boxing; that would never do. 
He had to lose his in the more ladylike and refined 
bookworm way — too much reading.'* 



THE DRINK STORY 

FEW things in Colonel Roosevelt's later life are 
fresher in the public memory than his suit 
against a Michigan editor who accused him of drunk- 
enness. The unfortunate editor, unable to produce 
a scintilla of proof, admitted his fault, and so far as 
the records go, the matter was disposed of. There 
was nothing developed, however, to show where the 
tale started or what foundation, if any, it might have 
had. 

Colonel Roosevelt had an explanation. He gave 
it to us one afternoon in the trophy room in Oyster 
Bay, when passing the cigars around, he remarked 
that he would vouch for the quality. "They must be 
good," he remarked, "for they're some of Leonard 
Wood's. I never smoke myself, so I have to rely on 
the judgment of others." 

"Did you ever smoke?" some one asked. 

"There is where that story of my drinking started," 
he continued, not hearing the question or ignoring it. 

"You see, when I would decline a cigar, saying I 
did not smoke, folks would often ask, in a joking 
way, 'What are your bad habits?' In the same spirit 
I would reply, * Prize fighting and strong drink. * 

"Now it so happens that the Lord in His infinite 



i 



THE DRINK STORY 23 

wisdom elected to create some persons with whom it 
is never safe to joke — solemn asses who lack a sense 
of humor. I am very fond of that story of Sidney 
Smith's, who, playing with his children, stopped sud- 
denly, saying, 'Children, we must now be serious — 
here comes a fool.' You know the kind he meant — 
those poor unfortunates who must take everything 
said to them literally. 

"One of these to whom I made that remark said, 
'Roosevelt, I hear, drinks hard.' The other fool re- 
pHed, 'Yes, that's true. He told me so himself.' 

"And so the story went on its travels. 

"That is all there ever was to the talk of my drink- 
ing. From that start, it spread and spread until, in 
self-defence, I was compelled to take action to stop 
it. Some folks have said I went out of my way to find 
a little editor of small means and few sources of evi- 
dence who could not well defend himself. The fact 
is, he was the one editor I could hold to account. 
There were and are editors nearer New York I gladly 
would have sued under like circumstances, but they 
knew better than to print what they knew was un- 
true. Had any of them done so, I would have hauled 
them up short, and with much more glee than I did 
the Michigan man, for the men I have in mind have 
real malice toward me, and he, I am satisfied, had 
none. 



24 TALKS WITH T. R. 

"We parted good friends. I certainly had nothing 
against him. In his zeal to do things, he put in print 
what shrewder and really malicious men who would 
harm me if they could, dare not print. I believe he 
was honestly sorry when he found his error. 

"However, the thing had its value. We're never 
too old to learn and I learned to be careful with 
whom I cracked the simplest joke. Thank God, there 
are many you can joke with in safety. If we could n't 
laugh once in a while, what a world this would be! 
It would n't be a world — it would be a madhouse." 



i 



THE BREAK WITH TAFT 

THERE never has been any formal explanation 
as to what caused the break between Colonel 
Roosevelt and Judge William H. Taft. Here is 
Colonel Roosevelt's explanation, made, my note- 
book tells me, at Sagamore Hill, April 8, 1916. It was 
made in the course of a discussion as to the possibil- 
ity of a reconciliation which some mutual friends had 
taken upon themselves to try to arrange. 

At the time, the Colonel did not venture an opin- 
ion as to whether they would get together, but he 
did seem anxious to make it clear that, whatever 
he may have thought about Taft's backers in 1912, 
he had no real feeling against Taft personally. 

"The break in our relations," said he, ** was due to 
no one thing, but to the cumulative effect of many 
things — the abandonment of everything my Ad- 
ministration had stood for, and other things. 

"Taft changed greatly between the time he was 
elected and the time he took office. 

"The first friction came In the matter of his Cab- 
inet. When he was nominated I went to him and 
asked whom he wished to have take his place as 
Secretary of War. I told him I considered it as much 
his appointment as mine, and that I would appoint 



26 TALKS WITH T. R. 

no one not acceptable to him, though I had a good 
man in mind. I told him the man was Luke E. 
Wright. 

"He said Wright was absolutely the man he would 
have chosen himself. Wright, he recalled, had been 
with him in the Philippines and was the man for the 
place. 

"After he was elected he came to me and told me 
he wished to retain my Cabinet and would like to 
have me tell the members so. I realized at once that 
this was a rather delicate matter, believing he might 
and probably would change his mind later; that his 
wishes in November might not be his wishes in 
March; and I asked him if he really desired the mes- 
sage delivered. 

'"How about Cortelyou?* I asked. 'Do you want 
him? You know he thought he was your rival.* 

"He allowed this was so, and that he would not 
want Cortelyou. 

'"How about Bonaparte?' I asked. 'You know 
you do not think much of him as a lawyer.' 

"He agreed that he would wish another in the 
place, but he insisted that he wanted the others to 
stay, and on his definite insistence I delivered the 
message. More than that, those thus assured thanked 
Taft for the offer in my presence. 

"Wright was among those so assured; in fact, the 



THE BREAK WITH TAFT 27 

assurance that he was the joint choice of myself 
and Taft was, he said, the impeUing reason for his 
acceptance of the place when I offered it to him. 

"By inauguration time, however, Mr. Taft had 
changed his mind, just as I had feared he would, and 
it made a great deal of feeling. Some had made very 
definite plans on the strength of his offer, renewing 
leases of houses and that sort of thing, and it was 
bad all around. 

"That was the first bit of friction — the beginning. 

"In office, his militancy evaporated and he at 
once set about undoing all my Administration had 
done. Conservation went by the board, Newell of 
the Reclamation Service had to quit, and things went 
from bad to worse. They had reached such a pass 
that, when I got to Rome on my way home from 
Africa, I found Gifford Pinchot awaiting me. He 
wanted me to attack Taft then and there. Others 
were in the same mood. 

"But I said, 'No,' we should do nothing of the 
sort. I wanted to do nothing to injure Mr. Taft or 
his Administration. 

"Thus things went, one thing after another, until 
finally the Rural Welfare Commission, one of the 
best things we had, was abandoned. That was the 
last straw. The break came on that, but it was not 
because of that. It was because of the many things 



2 8 TALKS WITH T. R. 

of which that was the capstone, the climax. By the 
way, the Government never even printed the report 
of that Commission. We finally had it done at the 
expense of the Seattle Chamber of Commerce. 

"There you have the real story of our break. 

''Of course there were other things. We had a 
perfectly good treaty with Japan, under which we 
had the right to pass exclusion laws. Japan asked 
that we not do so, offering to make a gentlemen's 
agreement to keep her folks at home if we would not 
pass such a law. The agreement was made and kept, 
but we had the right to enforce exclusion under the 
treaty if Japan did not keep her promise. Mr. Taft, 
however, went to work and made a new treaty, in 
which that right to exclude was waived, we relying 
on their gentlemen's agreement, which they may or 
may not live up to, as circumstances may seem best 
to them. 

"That was a mistake, and how California ever let 
that treaty go through is beyond me. Now, as mat- 
ters stand, Japan can do as she pleases. The part of 
wisdom was to have retained that provision of the 
old treaty as a club. 

"Then there was messing about with treaties 
guaranteeing the peace of Latin America by which 
we committed ourselves to raise an army of at least 
300,000 men when just now we are showing we can- 



THE BREAK WITH TAFT 29 

not raise an army large enough to take care of 
Mexico. 

"All in all, you can see there were many differ- 
ences, none in itself serious enough to cause any 
break in our cordial relations, but taken together, 
very serious. 

"I never regretted anything more in my life. I 
have never questioned Taft's honesty in any or all 
of the things I have mentioned. Some were mistakes, 
such as the Cabinet matters. In other things he was 
very much imposed upon. When Taft led me to 
believe he was going to come out for the policies 
agreed upon, he honestly intended to do so. His 
militancy just evaporated." 



THE ATTEMPT ON HIS LIFE 

THE fellow who shot me was cracked, and the 
doctors found him to be insane, so they put 
him into an insane asylum for the balance of his days. 
It was the best way to dispose of his case." 

Colonel Roosevelt was speaking of the attempt 
made on his life in Milwaukee during the campaign 
of 1912. 

"The man was cracked. He had been interested 
in a saloon that was in trouble while I was Police 
Commissioner, and, brooding on the thing, his poor 
brain gave away altogether. 

"I had no special reason for thinking that I was 
in danger during that campaign, certainly much less 
than I had in the time I was in the White House or 
at other times since. Of course, when I was in the 
White House a rather careful watch was kept upon 
those who might wish to destroy me, and persons 
approaching me too closely were scrutinized, but I 
was never very much worried about that sort of 
thing or gave it much thought. 

" More to save the nerves of the secret service men 
and some of my friends than anything else, I tried 
to be as little careless as I could consistent with a 
reasonable degree of freedom of action, but I was 



THE ATTEMPT ON HIS LIFE 31 

something of a fatalist in the thing, and I realized 
that however careful a man might be, there was 
bound to be some risk at all times. I have, I believe, 
been in more danger from friendly crowds that 
seemed anxious to crush me to death in their wel- 
come, and to committees that would kill me with 
indigestion and overwork, than from anarchists or 
other cranks. 

"I was in the automobile when this fellow shot 
me; he reached over the edge like, and the next thing 
I knew was a flash and a fearful blow. It seemed as 
though I had been hit with a sledgehammer. I went 
through with my engagement to speak, as you know, 
but it was somewhat difficult. Otherwise, you know, 
members of my family and my friends would be 
frightened half to death. After the shooting my side 
was as black as your hat. 

"The bullet, you know, was never removed. It 
passed through a rib and through the outer case of 
the lungs. It was thought best not to try and remove 
it as it did not seem to be doing any damage. This 
dry bronchitis I have been known to suffer from, I 
believe, may be a result of that wound." 



WHY TWO POLITICIANS FAILED 

TO those resident away from New York, as well 
as to many resident within, the defeat of 
Mayor John Purroy Mitchel for reelection and the 
failure of Governor Charles S. Whitman to make a 
better showing than he did, are mysteries. 

There are those who cite both failures as proof 
that New York City, at least, does not want good 
government, for Whitman, like Mitchel, was beaten 
by New York City votes. 

Colonel Roosevelt held no such opinion. To him 
Mitchel failed because he got out of touch with the 
public, while Whitman, he declared, might well have 
been President had he attended strictly to the busi- 
ness of being Governor of the State of New York. 
Whitman was no prime favorite of his, but he be- 
lieved Whitman might easily have duplicated Cleve- 
land's feat in jumping from the Executive Mansion 
in Albany to the White House had he not been badly 
stung by the presidential bee early in his term of 
office. 

"If," said the Colonel, as I was leaving Oyster 
Bay for the Chicago Convention of 191 6, "Whitman 
had had the sense just to have been Governor of 
New York these two years, it would n't be a question 



WHY TWO POLITICIANS FAILED ;i2 

of Hughes or Roosevelt in Chicago. It would have 
been Whitman. 

"Just think of the chance he had! Elected Gover- 
nor of the State of New York on a highly moral issue 
by an enormous majority, with a legislature friendly 
and the people sympathetic; all he had to do was be 
Governor of New York, a real Governor, and make 
his administration stick out just as Arthur Woods 
has stood out as a Police Commissioner, and the 
nomination would have been his without the asking. 
He had every chance, and more, that Cleveland had. 

"But it was not in him to think of these things. 
He had his eyes on the Presidency from the moment 
he was elected ; he has not made the record he could 
have made by attending strictly to the job in hand, 
and he has lost the Presidency. It is too bad." 

Colonel Roosevelt went into the Mitchel campaign 
with no delusions as to the probable result. There 
was, however, a chance that Tammany might lose, 
and he felt that no hope of beating Tammany was 
too forlorn to be abandoned. To him duty spelled 
a drive at Tammany whenever the opportunity 
offered. 

Mayor Mitchel's failure, the Colonel believed, was 
due entirely to his getting out of step with the 
electorate. 

"There is," he went on to say, "no doubt that 



34 TALKS WITH T. R. 

Mitchel has on the whole given New York the best 
administration the city has ever had. There is every 
reason why his administration should be continued. 
Another four years and Tammany will be starved to 
death. If Tammany gets back now, it means another 
lease of life for it. 

"Furthermore, the weaknesses of Mitchel as 
Mayor are temperamental rather than otherwise. 
He has been a good Mayor and the work now begun 
should be carried on. To elect Hylan or any other 
man with the Tammany tag on him is to give the 
cause of good government in America a decided set- 
back." 

"Yet," said I, "he has made his election impos- 
sible by his arrogance and, what you have noted, 
his being out of touch with the man in the street. 
Almost anything may develop in the campaign. 
Personally I feel sure it will develop into quite the 
dirtiest mud-slinging affair we have known in years. 
For that reason, and the additional fact that I do 
not like to see you identified with a loser, I am sorry 
you are in it. You cannot hope to win." 

"Being with a loser, so long as what the loser 
stands for is right, has no terrors for me," he re- 
plied. 

"The weakness of Mitchel and his fight is that he 
has failed utterly to keep in touch with the people. 



WHY TWO POLITICIANS FAILED 35 

Three years ago, after Mitchel had been in office 
nearly a year, I told him he was in danger of making 
his a ' swallowtail ' administration ; that he was put- 
ting too many men into office the people did not 
know, and some that they knew and did not like. 

" I told him he would do well to put some man into 
responsible office who was really in touch with the 
best in the labor unions; that an occasional appoint- 
ment of a clean-cut young Irishman would be wise, 
warning him at the same time that he was surround- 
ing himself with men not in touch with the people 
and who would surely isolate him from the masses. 

"It was not enough, I told him, to give the people 
a good administration — he must not give the people 
the impression that he was not one of them, that he 
was a man aloof. 

"Again, a year later, I told him he would be wise 
if he took an occasional night away from Fifth 
Avenue and went east two or three blocks and got 
acquainted, say, with Second Avenue, and that he 
might with pleasure and profit hire a chauffeur who 
knew the way to Brooklyn. He would, I told him, 
have a lot of fun at a ball in, say, the Third Assem- 
bly District; a better time, perhaps, than he ever had 
in Fifth Avenue, find the girls just as good if not 
better dancers, and be a better Mayor for having 
the fun. But he did not see things that way. 



26 TALKS WITH T. R. 

"The worst things that this fellow Hearst is say- 
ing against him, that he is a little brother of the rich, 
a sycophant at rich men's tables, a social climber, 
is due chiefly to himself. His constant appearance 
in the papers as being at this, that, or the other 
week-end party has lent foundation and color for 
these things. 

"No man seriously questions John Mitchel's hon- 
esty. But many do insist that instead of buying his 
influence with cash, the so-called interests secure it 
with invitations to tea or dinner. In the public mind 
he is, I 'm sorry to say, a social climber. He has only 
himself to blame for this. 

"He made a fearful tactical blunder when the 
Vanderbilt car was in an accident and he insisted 
upon the chauffeur of the other car being arrested. 
If it had been his own or John Smith's car that he 
was in at the time of the accident, that might have 
been the correct course to have taken, but the 
Vanderbilt car — never. 

"He has blundered, too, in his very efficiency. 
The so-called Gary School System has become a lia- 
bility, where, properly handled, it would have been 
an enormous asset. 

"I believe it really solves the part-time, school 
problem. That is a problem of the tenements, of the 
immigrants very largely. Naturally it is so — they 




A WEIGHTY MATTER 



WHY TWO POLITICIANS FAILED 37 

have the large families, there are more of them, they 
live in the crowded sections. 

"You and I know the psychology of the immi- 
grant, of the man who works with his hands. With 
them, education for their children is almost an obses- 
sion. The Irishman wants a priest in the family, or a 
lawyer; the Jew, a student, a doctor, or a rabbi, and 
so on. It's understandable and commendable. They 
want their children to be better off than they have 
been. Lacking much of the higher education, they 
appraise it at a better value than many of us who 
have it. 

" If Mr. Mitchel had gone to them when this plan 
was decided upon, shown them where it would give 
their children more and better education, they would 
have been with him — they 'd have called him 
blessed. That would have been more than a politic 
thing to do — it would have been the decent thing 
to do ; for, after all 's said and done, the parent has 
the right to be consulted on anything so vital as his 
child's schooling. 

"Instead, having agreed that the doctors had 
fixed up medicine that would be good for the school 
patient, he decided to let the doctors jam it down 
the patient's throat, whether the patient liked it or 
not. 

"It's too late now, but we cannot blame the 



38 TALKS WITH T. R. 

parents of the ninety thousand children on half- 
time if they are offended, or if they resent what has 
been made (and by one of the Gary School defenders) 
to appear as an effort to keep their children in the 
places of hewers of wood and carriers of water. 

"No man in public ofifice, in justice to himself, his 
office, and the public, can allow the impression to 
gain ground among the people that he is no longer 
one of themselves, that he is a man apart." 

Later, while he was recuperating at Cooper's place 
in Stamford, having made the speeches for Mitchel 
that he had promised to make, Mr. Mitchel went to 
him to ask for more aid. Mitchel then felt that he 
was down, as a remark made while waiting to see the 
Colonel indicated. 

"We are reelecting you, Mr. Mayor," Miss Zoe 
Beckley had declared in answer to his question as to 
what she was doing there. 

"That," said the Mayor, "is more than I seem to 
be able to do myself." 

After he had talked with Mitchel, Colonel Roose- 
velt said he had agreed to make "half a dozen more 
speeches." 

"They have put it up to me pretty hard," he said, 
"and I do not see but that it is up to me to do what 
I can. The campaign, however, is being fearfully 
mismanaged. The cry, *A vote against me is a vote 



WHY TWO POLITICIANS FAILED 39 

for the Kaiser,' is a mistake. It is unfair and it will 
react. 

"If Mitchel could be made to see it his only hope 
is to stand on his record and challenge Hylan to say 
what reforms he will undo. He should stand pat on 
Arthur Woods's record in the police department and 
ask Hylan if he will bring the red lights back, the 
old days of Devery and police corruption and all 
these involve. 

"He has a dozen such chances if he will only use 
them." 

Later the Colonel, who really was very fond of 
Mitchel personally, expressed regret at the position 
in which defeat would probably leave him. 

" If," said he, " this young man is defeated — and 
it looks as though he will be — he personally will be 
in a most unfortunate plight. He will have to start 
fresh with the handicap of having been Mayor and 
he will then find that his society friends will have 
very little use for him. They will, beyond the shadow 
of a doubt, drop him, and he will realize then, what 
he does not realize now, that it is the Mayor of New 
York to whom these attentions have been paid and 
not to Purroy Mitchel. 

"The great weakness of Mitchel as Mayor is that 
he has had no popular appeal — he has not gripped 
the imagination of the masses." 



CLASHES WITH THE KAISER 

IT is not generally known that on at least three 
occasions — twice before the Great War and 
once since — Colonel Roosevelt and the Kaiser 
clashed. The Venezuela incident is more or less 
widely known, largely through Mr. Thayer's excel- 
lent book. But the clash of wills at the time of 
Colonel Roosevelt's visit to Berlin, and his refusal 
to take the Kaiser's part in 19 14, are not at all well 
known. 

The Colonel told of the clash in Berlin en route for 
Boston one Sunday in 1916. 

"It is," said he, "not generally known that I had 
a little friction with the Kaiser when I visited Ger- 
many. 

"When I reached Berlin I found an invitation for 
* Mr. Roosevelt' to be the Kaiser's guest at Potsdam. 
Mrs. Roosevelt was travelling with me. I asked at 
the Embassy what the invitation meant — if it in- 
cluded her. When I found it did not, I declined, and 
said I was stopping at the Embassy. 

"The invitation was repeated. My answer was 
that Mrs. Roosevelt and I were to be the guests of 
the Embassy. I was travelling as any American 
gentleman might travel with his wife and I did not 



CLASHES WITH THE KAISER 41 

propose to go any place where she would not be wel- 
comed or could not go. The next day * Colonel and 
Mrs. Roosevelt' were invited. By maintaining my 
point I had made it. 

"While I was his guest, Wilhelm, a delightful host, 
was very frank in telling what he thought of other 
Americans who had visited him — Andrew Carnegie 
and others. Later he sent me photographs he had 
taken of some of them with bits of his opinions of 
them written on the backs. They were not opinions 
calculated to please the subjects of the pictures. 

" I suppose he was advised that he should not have 
done this, for the return of the photographs was re- 
quested. I said, 'Oh, no, His Majesty the Kaiser 
gave the photographs to me and I propose to retain 
them.' I suppose I was the one man in the Empire 
at the time who could refuse to obey his wishes. 

"Anyway, I kept the photographs. They have 
been mounted on glass so one can read the inscrip- 
tions. 

" I clashed again with the Kaiser directly the War 
broke out," the Colonel went on. 

"Then I was called upon by a young member of 
the German Embassy staff in Washington — a count 
— I cannot recall his name now. 

"'I am instructed by His Majesty the Kaiser,' 
said he, * to present his compliments to Colonel 



42 TALKS WITH T. R. 

Roosevelt, to say to him that he has very pleasant 
recollections of his visit to Berlin and Potsdam and 
to say that he hopes Colonel Roosevelt will appre- 
ciate Germany's position and can be relied upon to 
see the justice of it.' 

"'You will please present my compliments to His 
Majesty the Kaiser,' I answered; 'say to him that I, 
too, have very pleasant recollections of my stay in 
Berlin and Potsdam, and his many courtesies to me, 
his guest, but that I also have a very lively recollec- 
tion of courtesies extended to me by His Majesty, 
the King of Belgium, whose guest I also was.* 

"He clicked his heels together, saluted and left. 
I have not heard from him or the Kaiser since. 

"I imagine the Kaiser also had recollections of 
the Venezuela matter. He was convinced that I was 
bluffing when he was told I would maintain the 
Monroe Doctrine. Von Holleben, then Ambassador, 
told him so; so reported to the Foreign Office. I in- 
sisted on our rights, and finally told the Ambassador 
that Admiral Dewey and his ships would be ordered 
to sail for Venezuelan waters within twenty-four 
hours if in the meantime I did not receive definite 
assurances that Germany had abandoned its inten- 
tions. Dewey was then in West Indian waters. 

"Von Holleben then concluded that I was not 
bluffing, and his cable reversing himself caused a 



CLASHES WITH THE KAISER 43 

panic in the German Foreign Office. Soon after this 
he was recalled in disgrace. He was in so bad only 
one German official was at the ship to see him off. 
On his return to Germany he dropped out of sight 
completely. 

"The one man who sized me right and who put 
Berlin on the right track was Carl Buenz, then 
Consul-General in New York. He lived out Long 
Island way and had visited me at Sagamore Hill. 
He was shrewd enough to size up the situation accu- 
rately. He told the Embassy it was in error and 
warned it to beware, that I was not bluffing, 

"Lately, you will recall, Buenz has been indicted 
for plotting to put bombs on English ships — some 
of those German war plots. 

" Dewey at that time had instructions to be ready 
to move on a moment's notice." 

Subsequent to this conversation Henry A. Wise- 
Wood, noting that the accuracy of some of Colonel 
Roosevelt's published utterances on the Venezuela 
matter had been challenged, wrote to Admiral 
Dewey. Dewey's reply, published at the time, cor- 
roborated fully all that the Colonel had said about 
holding his ships in readiness for action. 

"That, gentlemen," said the Colonel, calling 
attention to the Dewey letters, "is another of those 
instances where proof of things you know to be so 



44 TALKS WITH T. R. 

comes to you when you need it from unexpected 
quarters. It is passing strange how, somehow or 
other, truth will out." 

Once, later, Colonel Roosevelt mentioned Carl 
Buenz. Buenz, who was out on bail on the plot 
charges, was old and, as it proved, hopelessly ill. 
He wished permission to return to Germany in the 
hope that he might there get relief, or, failing that, 
die in his old home. To get this permission he asked 
the Colonel's assistance. 

" I surely shall do all that I can for him," he said, 
"but I fear that all won't be much. He is entitled to 
consideration, not because he plotted, as I assume he 
did, but for the really valuable service he did this 
country as well as his own in the Venezuela matter. 
Whatever else he may have done, this should not 
be forgotten. I hope he gets what he asks, but I am 
afraid he won't." 

The Colonel's fears proved true, and Buenz, later 
convicted, died in the Federal Penitentiary at 
Atlanta. 



THAT GARY DINNER 

IT is not known to many that, in 191 5, Colonel 
Roosevelt threatened, in the event that cer- 
tain contingencies became facts, to support Presi- 
dent Wilson for reelection against the Republican 
nominee. 

The threat was made at a luncheon given at the 
Harvard Club in December of that year by the late 
Robert J. Collier. Later, in explaining the famous 
Gary dinner to me, Colonel Roosevelt repeated the 
threat. 

The Gary dinner may well be described as the 
mystery of the 191 6 campaign. Exactly what it 
meant, few knew then, and, publicly it has never 
been authoritatively explained. 

The facts are that it was but an incident in the 
Colonel's campaign for preparedness — he attended 
it that he might explain so that "big business men, 
who have not been my friends, but who now know 
that I am right, might see the situation exactly as it 
is, and be in a position to help." 

"There is," said he immediately after the dinner, 
"no politics in this. We have come to a situation 
where all Americans must stand together — big 
business men and little business men, farmer and 



46 TALKS WITH T. R. 

banker, artisan and longshoreman. I have not gone 
to the big business men — they have come to me." 

That the Gary dinner threw the politicians into 
a flutter and sent such "Old Guardsmen" as Boies 
Penrose and Murray Crane flying to New York to 
find out what it was all about, was entirely due to 
the fact that Mrs. Harold Vivian, wife of a political 
writer on the New York World, had an engagement 
to attend a concert on the night of the dinner. 

The next morning, Vivian, in the course of break- 
fast small talk, asked how she enjoyed the entertain- 
ment. 

"I did not go," said she. "You see " (naming 

the young woman with whom she was to have gone) 
"had to sing at the big dinner Judge Gary gave 
Colonel Roosevelt last night." 

Vivian lost interest in the grapefruit then and 
there. He knew of the Colonel's rule about attending 
private dinners except in his own home or in the 
homes of his immediate friends as well as the 
Colonel's horror of large private dinners anywhere. 
It appealed to him as a story, and the next day the 
fact that there had been such a dinner, together with 
the names of the guests, was made public. What 
happened, what was said at the dinner, was not. In 
consequence, political editors and the public jumped 
at the conclusion that Colonel Roosevelt was pre- 



THAT GARY DINNER 47 

paring to run for the Presidency again. For some 
days there was considerable speculation as to what 
it really meant, until Robert E. MacAlarney, then 
city editor of the New York Tribune, suggested I see 
Colonel Roosevelt and end the mystery. 

My reception by the Colonel was characteristic. 

"I certainly will not give any interview on that 
dinner," he declared. ** Neither will I authorize any 
statement. I will, however, tell you just what it 
means and what happened there, and then, if you 
wish, you can explain in your own way and on your 
own responsibility. 

*'It is absolutely nonsensical to assume, as some 
have assumed, that this dinner had anything to do 
with my being a candidate for President. I am not 
thinking of anything of that sort now. 

"All that was discussed at that dinner was what 
you might, for want of a better term, call ' the greater 
Americanism.' If that is politics, then we talked 
politics. 

"Now, let us sit down and discuss this thing. 
When I am through you can tell me what you think 
you want to do. You can have all the facts ; you need 
all the facts to write of the thing intelligently. But 
whatever you write, it must be understood that I 
must not be quoted and it must not be made to 
appear that I am the source of information." 



48 TALKS WITH T. R. 

''How was it," I asked, "that Judge Gary, whom 
I know to be interested in, and an advocate of, pre- 
paredness, happened to ask you to meet the people 
who were at that dinner?" 

" It is not my practice," said he, "to cross-examine 
those who invite me to dine as to their motives for 
so doing. But if I were to guess, I would say that one 
actuating motive was a feeling of *I told you so.' 

"Gary, as you probably know, has always been 
friendly to me. I do not know that he voted for me in 
191 2, but I would not be surprised to learn that he 
did. All but two or three of his guests that night were 
anti-Roosevelt men eighteen months ago. They were 
very much opposed to my work for preparedness. 
The few that were not anti-Roosevelt men were of 
the opinion that I was committing political hara-kiri. 
The others said I was rocking the boat. 

"Now they say that in preaching preparedness, I 
was right and am right. And I think that Mr. Gary 
had in a way a sort of desire to say to his friends in 
iniportant business: 

" ' Come and have a look at this fellow you thought 
so terrible; notice that he does not shoot at the musi- 
cians; that he eats in a normal way and prefers his 
food cooked; that when he talks he talks sanely as 
you and I talk, and talks nothing but the soundest 
kind of Americanism.' 



THAT GARY DINNER 49 

"That is only a guess, however. In any event it 
could not have been the big motive. Behind it all, 
I believe, was a desire of these men — all Americans, 
men who have done things and are doing big things, 
men who have a stake in the country — to take 
counsel together on the big problem of national pre- 
paredness. Under the circumstances, was it not nat- 
ural that I should be asked to attend and submit 
my views? I was glad to go, glad that these men were 
seeing the light. That's all there was to that. 

"What did I tell them? Exactly what I have been 
telling others for months past, ever since the war in 
Europe began, and what I propose to tell everybody 
who will listen to me — the need of preparation. 

"But with all of this talk about the Gary dinner 
why is the luncheon Bobby Collier gave at the Har- 
vard Club overlooked? There were politics there in 
plenty. Mr. Collier, I suspect, also, had something 
of the *I told you so' idea in his head when he 
planned the luncheon, for, in the movement for pre- 
paredness, he was in much the same position as 
Judge Gary — with me, but lonesome so far as his 
every-day associates were concerned. 

"All but one or two of the men he had at the 
luncheon were anti-Roosevelt men three years ago. 
They were anti-Roosevelt men when I began talking 
preparedness eighteen months ago. Then they said, 



50 TALKS WITH T. R. 

as Judge Gary's friends had said, * Roosevelt is rock- 
ing the boat.' Three fourths of them — most of the 
party were writers — agreed with me before they 
left. 

"We did talk politics there — the straightest kind 
of politics. The political discussion was started by 
Frank Simonds referring to an editorial in the New 
York Tribune calling attention to the way party 
leaders were dodging the real issue and asking, * Do 
they want Roosevelt?' meaning, as you know, for 
President in 1916. That editorial was strong meat. 
It appealed to me immensely. 

" In the discussion that followed, I said that, much 
as I dislike Mr. Wilson and despise his policies, in the 
event of the Republicans nominating any man on 
a hyphen platform or on hyphenated promises, I 
would support President Wilson for reelection with 
all of the strength at my command. 

"And, by Godfrey, I mean it! If there's a mongrel 
platform adopted by the Republican Convention, 
much as I dislike Wilson, I '11 stump the country for 
him from one end of it to the other and I won't ask 
his permission to do so either. 

"No platform and no man who swerves in the 
slightest degree from absolute loyalty to the greater 
Americanism can have my support. I will not be 
neutral if such a candidate is named or such platform 



THAT GARY DINNER 51 

adopted. There is no such thing as being neutral 
between right and wrong. Neutral! I do not care 
who the man is or who his friends are or who comes 
to me in his behalf, if such a candidate is named, 
I will fight him with every weapon at my command. 

"But at neither place did I say anything to ad- 
vance either my own candidacy or that of any other 
man. I am not interested in candidates. I am inter- 
ested in principles. My sole interest at these two 
affairs was to try and arouse the American people, 
to urge them and ultimately, through them, compel 
Congress to take the proper attitude on the question 
of greater Americanism and national preparedness. 
If you say that I am working not for a nomination, 
but as every American should work to secure the 
peace and prosperity of the United States, you will 
have hit the nail on the head. 

"And don't overlook the fact that any Republican 
who seeks President Wilson's place by pandering to 
the hyphens will find that he is fighting Roosevelt 
as well as Wilson. 

"I dislike Wilson, I dislike his policies almost to 
the point of hate, but I am too good an American to 
stand idly by and see him beaten by a mongrel 
American or by one professing mongrel principles." 



THE COLONEL AND JUDGE HUGHES 

THROUGH the 1916 campaign Colonel Roose- 
velt was careful, even with his intimates, to 
say nothing that would in any way reflect upon 
Judge Hughes. Hughes was the candidate of the 
party, he preferred him over Mr. Wilson, but he 
was not the type T. R. favored. More than that, in 
their personal relations the Colonel felt that Judge 
Hughes had not treated him quite fairly. This was 
in connection with the Barnes libel suit in which the 
Colonel had hoped Judge Hughes would be one of 
his most important witnesses. 

Occasionally during the campaign a scornful refer- 
ence to the "bearded lady" advised whoever of the 
inner circle was addressed that it was Mr. Hughes 
who was in the Colonel's mind. Such occasions were 
rare, and developed only when the Colonel, who, 
with all his heart and soul prayed for Republican 
success, was piqued by the lack of "pep" in the 
Hughes canvass and the failure of the candidate to 
take a definite position on Germany. 

He was, moreover, thoroughly familiar with the 
innermost details of the Hughes campaign, more so, 
some folks thought, than the candidate himself. 
These details came to him from many and widely 



THE COLONEL AND JUDGE HUGHES S3 

scattered sources. For example, there was hardly a 
reporter on the Hughes trains or at the national 
headquarters but that was cold toward the candi- 
date. The more seasoned of them were of the T. R. 
" Old Guard," members of the "Roosevelt newspaper 
cabinet," and as loyal to the Colonel as the bull pup he 
sometimes referred to as a standard of loyalty. These 
did not hesitate to tell the Colonel whenever they 
saw him — and they made it their business to meet 
him whenever possible — the inside news of the trips. 

"Feeling as you do," he remarked to one of these, 
"you are going to find it difficult to vote for Mr. 
Hughes." 

"Hughes, hell," replied William Hoster, the man 
addressed; "I desire to save a fragment of my self- 
respect." 

After Hoster had gone, I remarked that he seemed 
"to feel rather keenly on the subject of Hughes." 

"I am afraid," said the Colonel, "that there are a 
great many like him. Hughes is not an attractive 
personality at best. Close contact with him does not 
make him more attractive, for he is a very selfish, 
very self-centred man. Those boys would like to be 
his friends, but he won't let them and his namby- 
pamby policy or lack of real policy disgusts them. 

"They have, as the boys would themselves say, 
taken his measure. 



54 TALKS WITH T. R. 

"You know as well as I do that some of the boys 
on that train and at Bridgehampton [Hughes's sum- 
mer home] are among the shrewdest judges of poli- 
tics in this country. They see — they must see — 
many things on a trip any candidate will overlook 
however shrewd he is. They know the psychology of 
crowds and the newspapers and are valuable advis- 
ers in a campaign. Does Mr. Hughes take advantage 
of all this? No, he just withdraws into his whiskers, 
and their advice, when they manage to force it upon 
him, is ignored. 

"What these men hate is his cowardice — his re- 
fusal to say anything, however right, that might 
jeopardize his chances. If he had consulted these men 
and taken their advice he would never have trafficked 
with Jerry O'Leary." 

With the verdict of the Chicago Convention, 
Colonel Roosevelt never quarrelled. He accepted it 
loyally and whole-heartedly, though, it should be 
said, with misgivings as to the result, and prepared 
to efface himself as much as possible, lest by unduly 
remaining in the limelight he injure the candidate's 
chances. His fear was that Hughes would not make 
the right sort of a campaign. 

"Hughes's danger," he then said, "is that he will 
not carry the fight to Wilson." 

The declaration that Hughes would have to fight 



THE COLONEL AND JUDGE HUGHES 55 

to win was made immediately after the convention 
and before the pubHc at large knew what position he 
would take in the canvass. He was not at all confi- 
dent of the result, not wholly satisfied with Hughes 
as a candidate, but he never hesitated about sup- 
porting him. 

When he made this declaration he had prepared 
his letter declining the Progressive nomination and 
was awaiting the meeting of the Progressive Na- 
tional Committee in Chicago before making public 
his position. Judge Hughes knew this; so did the 
leaders of the Republican and what was left of the 
Progressive Party. 

His own programme was definite. It provided for 
such speeches for Hughes as might be called for, but 
otherwise none of the limelight for him. 

"The truth is," said he, "and a fellow does not 
like to speak as I am going to, I have done my share. 
Let some one else carry the load for a while. 

"After to-morrow's meeting in Chicago I hope to 
be let alone. The Committee will agree with me — 
there will be nothing more for me to say. I have said 
it all in my letter. Mr. Hughes has seen it and is 
satisfied. There is nothing more for me to do or 
say. 

"Don't you see that as things are working out I 
took the only course open? If Burton or Harding had 



56 TALKS WITH T. R. 

been named, I would have to support the nominee 
against Wilson. Imagine Hughes at his very possible 
worst, and he cannot do worse than Wilson has done 
or is doing. It is impossible. Any change is bound to 
be a good one. Hughes will develop all right if he is 
elected. I can do nothing but support him. 

"Hughes won't come out here. I don't believe he 
will. What will probably happen is this: I will meet 
Mr. Hughes in town at dinner; speeches will come 
later — if they come at all. Whatever I do depends 
on Mr. Hughes. 

" I cannot make his fight for him or tell him how 
to fight. He must do his own battling, make his own 
plans. His danger is that he will not carry the fight 
to Wilson. If he does that he is safe. But if he allows 
Wilson to get the jump on him he is beaten. Wilson 
will do it with him if he does not watch out. As mat- 
ters stand, and if the election were held to-morrow, 
Hughes is beaten. 

"Here is the cruelty of this nomination of Hughes : 
For years he has been out of touch with real things; 
he knows nothing of the great things the Progressive 
Party movement stood for and did ; he is out of touch 
with the man in the street; out of touch with national 
and world politics. He is nominated at a time when 
we needed an advocate — not a judge. 

"I cannot but support Hughes. You see that as 



THE COLONEL AND JUDGE HUGHES 57 

clearly as I do. It is the only thing for me to do be- 
cause it is the right thing to do." 

A few days later, June 28, to be exact, Colonel 
Roosevelt motored into New York to dine with Mr. 
Hughes — just as the Colonel had said some days 
before they probably would meet. The two dined 
alone with, the Colonel told me, Mr. Hughes doing 
most of the talking. 

" It was," he told me the next day, "not my night 
to talk. When I had pledged him my support to the 
limit, there was little for me to say. As I have said 
to you and to others, I cannot make his fight or 
plan it. 

"I did tell him, though, that he'd have to make 
an aggressive fight of it, to keep Wilson on the jump 
every blessed minute, and not to be any more afraid 
of hurting the feelings of pro-Germans, real Germans, 
and Pacifists than he was of hurting the feelings of 
race- track gamblers when he was Governor; that he 
must hit and hit hard." 

"Will he do it. Colonel?" I asked. 

" I don't know," he replied. "A term on the bench 
takes the punch out of many men ; it slows them up. 
It may be that way with Hughes; I don't know. But 
I do know that he must fight to win." 

At this talk he reiterated a hope, expressed im- 
mediately after Mr. Hughes was nominated, that 



58 TALKS WITH T. R. 

the newspapers allow him to drop out of the lime- 
light. 

"There won't be a thing doing out here," he said 
("here" being Sagamore Hill). "You see I have 
simply got to stay out of the limelight. These fools 
who want me to jump into the middle of the cam- 
paign do not know what they are talking about. 

" It would lick Hughes sure. 

"It could not help but make him a tail of the 
Roosevelt kite. It would not be fair to him or to me. 
You see that. The most I can do is to make two or 
three prepared addresses. 

"Furthermore, unless you boys [the reporters] 
keep me to the rear, allow me to go to the rear, you '11 
beat Hughes sure as shooting — make no mistake 
about that." 

In the Hughes campaign Colonel Roosevelt made 
one trip as far west as the Rockies, the original pro- 
gramme of going through to California being 
amended. This change in the itinerary in all prob- 
ability cost Mr. Hughes the election. Made by the 
National Committee, the Colonel's intimates be- 
lieved the change was due to a desire that nothing 
be done which might help Hiram Johnson in his cam- 
paign for the Senate or offend Harrison Gray Otis, 
W. W. Crocker, and other "Old Guardsmen" who 
were opposed to him. 



THE COLONEL AND JUDGE HUGHES 59 

Even then, the trip came dangerously close to 
ending at Denver, where on his arrival the Colonel 
found a messenger awaiting to ask that he confine 
future addresses to the tariff and Mexico and let 
Germany and preparedness alone. At first the 
Colonel agreed to this. Then he wired the National 
Committee cancelling all his engagements east of 
Denver. This the Committee apparently dared not 
do, for he was wired to proceed as he wished. 

From this trip the Colonel returned rather de- 
pressed and worried as to the result. It was to have 
been his only trip, but in the last week of the cam- 
paign the Republican National Committee called on 
him to go to Ohio. There had been many calls for 
him from that quarter early in the contest, but it 
was not until November i when he was started on 
an admitted forlorn hope. 

That night, speaking of the situation, he declared 
the Wilson tide was receding, but he doubted if it 
was receding fast enough. 

"I doubt it," he said. "I have no fears for New 
York, but I am afraid of the West. If Hughes would 
only do something! 

"Hughes has not made Wilson fight. As matters 
are, the people do not know where Hughes does 
stand — they look upon him as another Wilson when 
they do not look upon him as a man without a policy. 



6o TALKS WITH T. R. 

" It is his own fault. I tell you he would have won 
even German votes by preaching straight Ameri- 
canism. 

"The campaign has lacked definite direction. It 
has been like Mr. Hughes's speeches — it has lacked 
the punch. It is a fact that a lot of the aged reaction- 
aries who have had so much to say at headquarters 
really think this fight could have been won on the 
tariff." 

Coming back East after speaking in Toledo and 
Cleveland, he returned to the subject, declaring that 
Ohio was gone, that even "poor Herrick is beaten 
with the rest — a victim of the cowardice of others." 

" Herrick "was Myron T. Herrick, our ambassador 
to France in the early days of the war, and a prime 
favorite of the Colonel's; he was the candidate for the 
United States Senate. 

"The 'Old Guard' here is not awake yet," said 
he; "they have simply thrown the State away. 

"I have been asked to-night why I did not come 
out earlier in the campaign when they asked for me 
instead of going into the sagebrush. I told them I 
went where I was sent; that they should ask that 
question of the National Committee." 

Sometime after the campaign was ended, a visitor 
at Sagamore Hill remarked: "Anyway, we have n't 
Hughes to worry about." 



THE COLONEL AND JUDGE HUGHES 6i 

"Exactly," said the Colonel; "we did not elect 
Hughes and we are not responsible for Mr. Wilson. 

"Hughes would have been another Wilson in 
many respects, only he would have surrounded him- 
self with men of a higher grade than Mr. Wilson has 
about him. He could not well get men inferior to those 
about Mr. Wilson. But he would have considered his 
election an act of God, and, in the Wilson way, been 
careless or contemptuous of the opinions of others." 

Mr. Hughes came up for discussion again at 
luncheon at Sagamore Hill just before Christmas of 
that year. The Colonel was, as usual, to play Santa 
Claus at the Cove School, and the "newspaper cab- 
inet" was down for the occasion. In the luncheon 
party, in addition to Colonel and Mrs. Roosevelt, 
were N. A. Jennings, Mrs. Jennings, William Hoster, 
Rodney Bean, S. L. Bate, the then resident corre- 
spondent at Oyster Bay, and myself. As it was the 
first time since election that so many members of the 
"cabinet" had met with the Colonel, there was much 
discussion of that event, but more of the statement 
of Secretary Lansing a few days previous to the 
effect that "we are on the edge of war," followed 
by the Secretary's explanation that he did not ex- 
actly mean what he seemed to say, the whole matter 
complicated by rumors of "leaks" to Wall Street 
and bad breaks in the market. 



62 TALKS WITH T. R. 

"The antics of the last few days," said the Colonel 
in this discussion, "have restored to me what self- 
respect I lost supporting Mr. Hughes.' 

Months later Colonel Roosevelt told something 
of his relations with Judge Hughes prior to 191 6 that 
partly explained the small opinion he held of him. 

"Hughes," said he, "went plumb back on his 
words and on me when Barnes sued me for libel. One 
of Barnes's grievances was my charge of bi-partisan 
management of the State of New York by him and 
Murphy. Hughes himself made that charge to me 
when the direct primary fight was on. Later, when I 
needed him, he denied all knowledge of it. 

"It came about in this way: In his fight as 
Governor for good government, Mr. Hughes com- 
plained that Murphy and Barnes were working to- 
gether to defeat legislation; that there was evidence 
of a definite agreement and the two machines were 
working as one, not only in this, but in other matters 
affecting the public interest. 

"When the Barnes suit came up, I wanted him as 
a witness. He declared that he did not recall the 
conversation and that he had no recollection that 
such a state of aff"airs had existed. Even when he 
was shown a printed statement coming from him, 
he had no recollection of the matter. That is the way 
Mr. Hughes stands up. 



THE COLONEL AND JUDGE HUGHES 63 

" It was his idea in this campaign to keep away as 
much as possible from all reference to the war in 
Europe or preparation for our inevitable part in it. 
He wanted to make his fight on war with Mexico, 
as though people could be interested in that. The 
real subject he dodged whenever he could. More 
than that, he tried to make me dodge it. 

"To do this Garfield was sent to meet me in 
Denver and ask that in my speeches, especially in 
Chicago, I omit preparedness and national defence. 
It was feared that I would alienate the women vot- 
ers. I agreed to do so, but after sleeping on the 
matter, decided it was not the thing for me to do. 
So I wired National Headquarters cancelling all of 
my engagements. The answer to this was advice to 
proceed as I had been, talking what was in me. 

"Results in Chicago proved that was the correct 
course. The honest course always is. At the stock- 
yards, I had a most wonderful meeting and the 
women were the most enthusiastic of the lot. The 
idea of American manhood, willing and insistent on 
defending its women and children even to the point 
of going to war to avenge their murder, was not at 
all abhorrent to them. On the contrary, they took 
no offence at my treatment of the Lusitania affair. 

"That was Mr. Hughes's work — his idea of the 
way a candidate should go, the way the advocates 



64 TALKS WITH T. R. 

of a candidate should go, always dodging any real 
issue that might cost votes." 

Again, in the Mitchel campaign. Colonel Roose- 
velt expressed an opinion of Judge Hughes. It was 
at a meeting in Madison Square Garden over which 
the Judge presided. To make it a go, every device of 
the political showman was resorted to. Even the old- 
fashioned torchlight parade, dead thirty or more 
years, was resurrected. Colonel Roosevelt, who had 
been speaking in Schuetzen Park, Astoria, came in 
late. I met him in the 27th Street entrance to the 
hall. 

"How's the meeting going?" he asked, sotto voce. 

"It's cold, freezing cold. Colonel," I answered. 
''You'll need your overcoat." 

The Colonel grinned. 

"Hughes," he replied, "must have brought his 
ice with him." 



HIS A SIMPLE CREED 

DURING the 191 6 campaign Colonel Roosevelt 
had an attack of dry pleurisy which kept him 
away from church one Sunday. Late that afternoon 
I called and remarked that the "boys thought it 
funny you did not go to church." 

"Huh, they did, did they? Well, you just tell them 
that if they think dry pleurisy is a joke, they 'd better 
try it. I am just going to stay right in here the next 
four or five days. Anyway, so far as church is con- 
cerned, I just had the Reverend Talmage up to look 
me over, the church came to me, and I Ve had the 
benefit of clergy. 

"Speaking of church, you once told me you were 
heterodox. That's right, is n't it? Well, do you know, 
I think — I wonder if you recall one verse of Micah 
that I am very fond of — 'to do justly and to love 
mercy and to walk humbly with thy God ' — that 
to me is the essence of religion. To be just with all 
men, to be merciful to those to whom mercy should 
be shown, to realize that there are some things that 
must always remain a mystery to us, and when the 
time comes for us to enter the great blackness, to go 
smiling and unafraid. 

"That is my religion, my faith. To me it sums up 



66 TALKS WITH T. R. 

all religion, it is all the creed I need. It seems simple 
and easy, but there is more in that verse than in the 
involved rituals and confessions of faith of many 
creeds we know. 

"To love justice, to be merciful, to appreciate 
that the great mysteries shall not be known to us, 
and so living, face the beyond confident and without 
fear — that is life. 

"That 's too simple a creed for many of us, though. 
Perhaps it is as well and that through more involved 
paths and mazes of theology the majority should 
seek the same result. 

" I can quarrel with no man because of his religion. 
The Roman Catholic, the Jew, the Protestant, the 
Mohammedan, the follower of Confucius — all are 
right so long as they seek to follow what their leaders 
have taught. You have done much of prison work. 
You know that the Roman Catholic is in prison, not 
because of his faith, but because he broke away from 
it; the Jew is there because he and the synagogue are 
no longer friends ; the Prqtestant, because his religion 
has ceased to be a living thing and his soul has 
atrophied. 

"You know that. 

"My, but I have no patience with those who 
attack, who would destroy a man's belief in religion 
— no patience with those who would convert the 



HIS A SIMPLE CREED 67 

Jew en masse, or the Catholic. More likely than 
not, where they succeed at all they succeed only in 
destroying something — they take something real 
away and give nothing in return, leaving the victim 
bankrupt. I am always sorry for the faithless man, 
just as I am sorry for the woman without virtue. 

"I have found, though, that however they may 
appear outwardly, most men at bottom are religious, 
just as the preponderating majority of men are hon- 
est and of women virtuous. Otherwise our civiliza- 
tion would end overnight. 

"Most men, I believe, are good citizens according 
to their lights. Take * Big Tim ' Sullivan, for example. 

"Tim came to me while I was in the White House 
to get a pardon for a friend. The man was in Atlanta 
for blowing a post-office safe, shooting the watch- 
man, and I know not what. Tim was insistent that 
he had reformed and that he 'd go straight if he were 
pardoned. The Post-Office folk did not think so, 
neither did the Department of Justice. They insisted 
the man must not be pardoned. But Tim was so sure, 
so positive, however, that his friend had changed 
that I decided to favor him. 

"'I'll give you this pardon, Tim,* said I, *on one 
condition. You must take it to Atlanta yourself, see 
this man before he has a chance to see any of his 
old pals, and warn him that if he goes wrong again, 



68 TALKS WITH T. R. 

he will not only be punished to the limit, but will 
have to finish out this sentence as well. There will be 
no mercy for him. And at the end of the year I want 
you to bring the fellow here and let me know how 
he's made out.' 

"Tim agreed to this. He would have agreed to 
anything and kept his agreement, too. He got the 
pardon and went his way. I forgot all about the 
thing until just one year after, I was told Tim was 
waiting to see me. He had an appointment, he told 
the attendant. I could not recall any, but I always 
liked the big fellow and I had him sent in. 

" ' Mr. President,' said he, when he came in, * I 've 
come about that fellow Blank. You know you told 
me to bring him here when he 'd been out a year and 
let you know how he's been acting. He's outside 
now.' 

'"Yes, I remember,' I told him. 'How has he been 
doing?' 

"'He's been perfect, Mr. President,' said the big 
fellow. 'When I got him to New York I put him to 
work behind a wheel in a gambling-house, and he's 
been doing fine ever since.' 

"That was good behavior, as Big Tim saw it!" 

The Colonel concluded, saying: "Well, you're 
getting the sermon you missed by not going to 
church, and I have been talking religion. It's some- 



HIS A SIMPLE CREED 69 

thing I do very seldom. After all, one's religion is a 
private thing and one is apt to be misunderstood. 

"So — ^ if I should say publicly or you should print 
one half of what we have said here to-day, some half- 
baked ass of a preacher would attack me to-morrow 
for endorsing the Pope; another because I am a 
Mohammedan at heart; and another would see in 
my tolerance for the rabbi proof that my right name 
is Rosenfelt or Rosenthal." 

This little "sermon" was delivered shortly after 
the 191 6 convention. Through the chat, of which it 
was a part, it was apparent that the Colonel was in 
an introspective mood. He was making, it seemed, a 
brave effort to conceal the hurt received at Chicago. 
During this talk I could not down the feeling that 
like many another, wounded in spirit, he was con- 
sciously or unconsciously turning to religion for 
comfort. 

As we were parting, Hayes, his ex-soldier secre- 
tary, came up the drive with the news that President 
Wilson had called the National Guard for possible 
service in Mexico. The Colonel looked far off over 
Long Island Sound In a thoughtful way, then shook 
his head. 

" Can you say anything on that, Colonel? " I asked. 

"No," said he, and his teeth clicked. "Let Hughes 
talk. It is his fight." 



HIS HOLD ON THE PUBLIC 

MANY have asked the secret of Roosevelt's 
wonderful hold on the public, and his ability 
to carry a crowd with him. Presumably the question 
will be discussed long after those who heard him 
have crossed the Great Divide, and with as wide, if 
not as great, a difference of opinion as when he was 
in the flesh. 

His own explanation may be given in one word: 
"Sincerity." 

This, he maintained, was the real secret, though 
he admitted that other qualities in his speeches were 
contributing factors. 

The discussion in which the Colonel declared him- 
self on this point came one night when he and a 
party of three were returning to New York from a 
red-hot Roosevelt meeting — two meetings, in fact, 
one in a hall, the other outside. 

It was precipitated by a remark by A. Leonard 
Smith of the New York Times, to the effect that the 
Colonel "certainly had that crowd." 

"What seemed to get them?" asked the Colonel. 

It was a question none in the party could answer, 
for the crowd, like most Roosevelt crowds, was 
enthusiastic from the start, and one could not say 



HIS HOLD ON THE PUBLIC 71 

that this, that, or the other point had been the most 
effective. Smith ended this phase of the discussion* 
by declaring the Colonel "always got the crowd." 
''My observation," said he, "has been that the 

ij result is the same whatever you talk upon — you 
get the crowd just the same." 

"What," asked the Colonel, "is the explanation? 
It certainly is not because I am an orator — for I 
am not. I have n't the voice to be an orator. What 

.. is it?" 

!' Smith submitted, "Probably because your words 
always carry a punch," as his answer. Another in 
the group thought it might be because the Colonel 

I "always had something to say." 

I "Is n't it because the crowd always knows I am 

" sincere?" asked the Colonel. "I think it is. Other- 
wise — bah!" (this with a wave of his hand) "it 
surely must be that in the years I have been in public 
life, folks have always found me sincere. Men do not 
always agree with me; in fact" (this whimsically) 
" many have been known to differ with me very seri- 
ously ; but my worst enemies do not, I believe, ques- 
tion my sincerity. Men who do not know me may 
doubt my sincerity, but no one who knows me does. 
At bottom, I do not believe any of the "Old Guard," 
Bill Barnes included, would question my sincerity. 
They know better. 



72 TALKS WITH T. R. 

"What you say about my having the punch is, 
perhaps, a factor; but my speeches would never get 
over if people did not believe I was sincere. An 
orator, which I am not, would get a crowd, perhaps, 
but he could not hold them if he lacked sincerity, or 
if the people thought he did. 

"We have all seen orators come and go, but none 
ever retained a hold on any perceptible part of the 
public who at least did not carry the impression of 
sincerity. 

" I have never hesitated to say a thing because it 
might be unpopular any more than I have ever found 
it at all necessary to say things I did not believe 
merely because they might be popular. In the end, 
as Emerson says, truth, however unpleasant, is the 
safest travelling companion. I have never found it 
at all necessary to pussyfoot or indulge in pleasing 
sophistries to hold any crowd. 

"On the other hand, I have never hesitated to 
tell folks unpleasant things I thought they should 
be told, any more than I have been afraid of heck- 
lers." I 

Far from being afraid of hecklers. Colonel Roose- ' 
velt rejoiced in them. Again and again, in the 1916 
campaign, local leaders, fearful he might offend 
somebody, would ask that he go slow, lest hecklers 
disturb him. 



HIS HOLD ON THE PUBLIC 73 

Once, a United States Senator asked that he con- 
fine his talk to the tariff. 

" My dear Senator," said he, "you will pardon me 
for saying I will do nothing of the kind. I did not 
come here to talk tariff, the crowd did not come here 
to hear me talk tariff, and I '11 be hanged if I do talk 
tariff. I'll talk what is in me." 

"But, Colonel," persisted the local man, "we 
know that there is an organized plan to heckle you 
if you talk war and preparedness." 

"So!" said the Colonel, "so?" 

"Yes, Colonel, there will be many hecklers there." 

Roosevelt, annoyed for an instant, suddenly broke 
into a grin. 

"Jack," he called to me in much the same manner 
that a small boy would announce ice-cream would 
be served at dinner, "did you hear that? The Senator 
here promises us that we'll have some hecklers to- 
night! Is n't that bully?" 

There were hecklers that night — just two of 
them. Their efforts served to emphasize the Colonel's 
points, both giving him openings he was quick to 
take advantage of to the delight of his audience. On 
the way to the train I remarked that the dreaded 
questioners had not made much progress. 

"Of course they did n't," he replied. "They sel- 
dom if ever do. A man with an honest question has 



74 TALKS WITH T. R. 

no terrors for a speaker who is honest himself. A dis- 
honest heckler has no chance with an honest speaker. 
''But if a man is sincere — he has nothing to fear. 
If he is n't sincere — he has no business speaking. In 
the long run, sincerity must be the test of any public 
man." 



THAT GOLDEN SPECIAL 

IN the year 191 6 Colonel Roosevelt frequently 
crossed the trail of the famous "golden special" 
train carrying women from a non-suffrage State to 
tell the women in suffrage States how to vote. 
Weeks before the press told the real story of the 
special, of orders "furs on" or "furs off," "wear 
jewels" or "dress plainly," wired back from advance 
agents, he had it from twenty sources. 

"That train cost $45,000," an indignant State 
Chairman told the Colonel. "Why did the National 
Committee ever allow it to start out?" 

"Well," said the Colonel dryly, " I do not pretend 
to speak for the National Committee, nor am I 
called upon to defend its idiosyncrasies, but if I were 
to guess I might say, somebody at headquarters 
thought it worth $45,000 to get some of those women 
as far away from headquarters as possible. It is an 
example of the way things have been done in this 
campaign." 



ON ELECTION EVE, 1916 

THE day before election in 191 6, I saw Colonel 
Roosevelt at Sagamore Hill. I raised the ques- 
tion as to what would follow if Judge Hughes should 
by any chance be elected. 

"I shall be out of it," said he. "I shall ask for 
nothing from him and will recommend nobody. He 
will not ask my advice. So I will just be an elderly 
literary gentleman of quiet tastes and an interesting 
group of grandchildren. 

"Make no mistake about Hughes. The men who 
gave him the nomination will regret the day they 
did it. Some of them have reason to regret it now. 
He feels that he owes them nothing, that he owes the 
party nothing. He will have trouble with the organi- 
zation, but he will make a fair President. 

"You see Mr. Hughes is grateful to nobody but 
Almighty God, and I am not so sure he is over- 
grateful to Him. He truly believes he was chosen 
by God to be President, when as a matter of fact 
he was merely picked by the * Old Guard ' to beat 
Roosevelt." 

"Suppose Mr. Wilson wins, what then?" 

"He will muddle along just as he has been, writing 
notes that are brave, but doing nothing to back them 



ON ELECTION EVE, 1916 77 

up until Germany decides it wants us in this war and 
kicks us into it. Against that contingency he will do 
nothing and war will find us as unprepared as we 
were two years ago. 

" I shall continue as I have been doing to advocate 
preparedness and to try to arouse the people to the 
need of universal military service. I shall not make 
the headway I should because of Mr. Wilson's atti- 
tude. I have no delusions on that score. But I shall 
continue, for whatever we do succeed in doing is 
that much gained. 

"But whether it be Mr. Hughes or Mr. Wilson 
that is elected, the result will be that we will be in 
this war sooner or later unless Mr. Hughes is much 
more fortunate than I fear he will be. 

"If he is elected and is big enough, if he is strong 
enough to make an out-and-out declaration of pure 
Americanism — if he is big enough to serve notice 
that he will make Germany toe the mark, when and 
if he becomes President, he may keep us out. 

"But Wilson, never! He will have secured his re- 
election and be in a position to do big things. But 
he won't do them. He'll simply write notes until 
something so audacious is done that he will wake 
up to the fact that Germany has been making war 
upon us while he has been writing." 

True to his promise, Colonel Roosevelt issued on 



78 TALKS WITH T. R. 

election night a declaration that he was in private 
life and would neither ask anything of Mr. Hughes, 
who then appeared to have been elected, or to recom- 
mend any one for office. Later when it appeared that 
California was in doubt and that Mr. Wilson might 
be reelected, he expressed no surprise. 

" I was not at all certain in my own mind that the 
confidence of the New York papers or of theNational 
Headquarters was fully justified when I gave out 
that statement," he said. "But it is just as well I 
did so. It certainly left the record straight." 



PERKINS AND T. R. 

GEORGE W. PERKINS, if the politicians who 
opposed Colonel Roosevelt in 191 2 and again 
in 1 91 6 are to be believed, was to have been the 
Mark Hanna of the Administration in the event of 
Colonel Roosevelt returning to the White House. 
According to them, there was a perfect understand- 
ing. On this they were unanimous. They differed 
only when it came to naming the place Perkins would 
reserve for himself. 

The truth, as I had it from Colonel Roosevelt on 
several occasions, was that Perkins asked for nothing 
and was promised nothing for himself or anybody 
else. 

"Perkins," said the Colonel at Sagamore Hill one 
day, "has been mentioned many times as the prob- 
able recipient of some office were I reelected Presi- 
dent, but there never has been any promise or under- 
standing, direct or implied, and these predictions 
have been without any authority whatever from me. 
The newspaper boys — have just been guessing. 
They knew that nobody ever did anything for me 
that I did not repay if and when I properly could. 

"Of course, I would have had to do something for 
Perkins. I would have made him Secretary of the 



8o TALKS WITH T. R. 

Treasury or of Commerce. He would be entitled to 
something and would be an extremely valuable man 
in either place. Perkins is eminently fitted for either 
of those places. In either place he would have made 
a record hard to equal." 

Mr. Perkins ceased to be Colonel Roosevelt's 
political manager soon after the 191 6 campaign, 
John T. King, Republican National Committeeman 
from Connecticut, taking on the work formerly done 
by Perkins. There was, however, no break in the 
intimate social relations of the two. Nor was there 
any break politically. There was need for none, for 
at the end of the 191 6 campaign there was little or 
nothing to do in a political way, and Perkins, in 
consequence, ceased to function as a politician. 

In the 191 6 campaign Colonel Roosevelt had be- 
come well acquainted with King. King had turned 
Bridgeport, which had been so hopelessly Democratic 
that the Republicans cast fewer votes than the 
Sociahsts, into a banner Republican community. In 
1916 it saved the State for Hughes. Alone of the 
National Committee early that year he sensed the 
party danger in California, but was unable to make 
those in charge of the campaign see things as he did. 
As the campaign ended, he and Colonel Roosevelt 
agreed something must be done to bring the party 
together. 



PERKINS AND T. R. 8i 

Colonel Roosevelt had been much impressed by 
King's personality and the method by which he had 
built up the party in Bridgeport. The organization 
there, he found, was made up largely of men who 
worked in the factories; it was close to the people 
and it was clean. The well-to-do and the wealthy 
were represented on, but did not dominate, it, and 
campaign funds were not welcomed from question- 
able sources. Moreover, King was persona grata to 
all elements in the party, and, a tireless worker him- 
self, he had the faculty of making others work. 

Perkins, on the other hand, was persona non grata 
with many. Those who had stuck with the "Old 
Guard" resented his prominence in party affairs, 
and ex- Progressives who had returned to the party 
frankly distrusted him. Most of the "Old Guards- 
men" were willing to forget everything connected 
with 1 91 2 but Perkins, and the ex- Progressives 
everything in 19 16 but Perkins. 

This was the situation in February, 191 7, when 
the time came for the National Committee to select 
a successor to Chairman Wilcox, who had resigned. 
King, as the representative of Connecticut, was 
going to the meeting in St. Louis, and was, in fact, 
Colonel Roosevelt's first choice for Chairman. Per- 
kins was also going, against the wishes of Colonel 
Roosevelt. Better than Perkins he realized that as a 



82 TALKS WITH T. R. 

peacemaker, Perkins would be about as useful as an 
orange flag at an outing of the Ancient Order of 
Hibernians. In consequence, he said, he made it 
clear to Perkins that, while he could not prevent his 
attending the conference, he must go there repre- 
senting no one but himself. 

At the same time, as a means of satisfying any 
doubting Thomas, he gave King a letter designating 
him as the only person authorized to speak for him 
in St. Louis. This document was the last he signed, 
by the way, before entering St. Luke's Hospital for 
the operations that so nearly proved fatal. 

" I am," he told me, "giving John King credentials 
that I think will satisfy anybody as to who's who in 
our set. This I believe a wise precaution, for Perkins 
insists on going out there, and there are sure to be 
some doubting Thomases. Perkins won't misrepre- 
sent the situation, but others may; there are some 
who will insist on misunderstanding the exact status 
of things, and others who may misrepresent matters. 
You know" — this with a laugh — "there are some 
persons who dislike Perkins even more than they 
dislike Roosevelt, and there are others who seem 
to lack faith in all George says. 

" I have tried to make him see things as I see them 
but he insists on going there." 

Before the St. Louis conference was under way, 



PERKINS AND T. R. 83 

Colonel Roosevelt was in the hospital a very sick 
man. Through it all he was in ignorance of what was 
developing, and the conference was a closed incident 
before he was sufficiently recovered to be told the 
result. He at once wired congratulations to Will H. 
Hays, the new Chairman of the Committee, an invi- 
tation to call accompanying the congratulations. 
Hays called within a few days, as did King and 
Perkins. 

All this time the replacement of Perkins by King 
had escaped popular notice. Inadvertently, a re- 
porter for a news agency was the cause of its becom- 
ing public. In a ten-line story he described Mr. King 
as "the Colonel's personal representative at St. 
Louis" without a thought of, and in fact with- 
out knowing, the significance of this statement to 
persons whose habit it is to read their papers 
closely. 

The description impressed John H. Gavin, city 
editor of the New York World, as something worth 
looking into. If, as seemed likely, there was a real 
break between the Colonel and Perkins, it was page i 
news, particularly for a Democratic organ that for 
years had had its own private feud with the Colonel. 
Those in possession of all the facts were too close- 
lipped to allow them to escape, so the best that could 
be done was an elaboration of the original statement 



84 TALKS WITH T. R. 

plus King's admission that he had been "the Colo- 
nel's representative at St. Louis." 

Perkins, on his part, avoided the real issue by 
declaring he knew "of no man less in need of a 
political manager than Colonel Roosevelt." 

Colonel Roosevelt chuckled when he heard of the 
World's attempt to develop the story, at the same 
time recognizing Gavin's astuteness in smelling it out. 

"Wouldn't the World just enjoy a real knock- 
down-and-drag-out fight between Perkins and me!" 
he said. "Well, there will be none. 

"Perkins does not like John King. I am sorry fofj 
that, but his opposition to King cannot change my 
relations with him. There is no change in the social 
relations with Perkins and myself. I look for none. 
But as a matter of fact, he has not represented me 
politically since 191 6. So that, so far as he is con- 
cerned, there really is no change in our relations. 
They remain the same as ever, and they will so re- 
main if I have anything to say about it. 

"Those who know of our relations know that 
George Perkins never asked anything of me and was 
never promised anything, directly or indirectly. Had 
I been elected in 191 2, I would have made him Sec- 
retary of the Treasury or Commerce, if he would 
have taken a place. In either place he'd reflect credit 
on any Administration. 



PERKINS AND T. R. 85 

"Many foolish persons — mainly politicians, who 
at times are the most foolish people on earth — 
imagined Perkins planned to play Mark Hanna to 
my McKinley. Perkins had no such thought. He 
knew better." 



A CABINET THAT NEVER WAS 

ONCE in a retrospective mood, Colonel Roose- 
velt talked of the Cabinet he would have 
named had he returned to the White House on 
March 4, 191 7. 

"I should," said he, "have made Perkins Secre- 
tary of the Treasury or of Commerce. He would 
have been entitled to something and could be an 
extremely valuable man in either place. 

"I should have made John King of Connecticut 
Postmaster-General . 

"Of course there is only one man for Secretary of 
War — General Goethals. I should have made Ray- 
mond Robins, of Illinois, Secretary of Labor, and 
Meyer Lissner, Secretary of the Interior. That 
would be a well-balanced and highly efficient organ- 
ization." 

"You have left the Navy, State, and Justice port- 
folios vacant," I remarked. 

"Well, for Navy, Admiral Winslow if I had had to 
draft him. I don't know who I 'd get for State, but I 
know who I would like — Lodge, if I could drag himi 
out of the Senate. For the Department of Justice, 
the west coast would have supplied a man — just 
who I never quite decided." 



A CABINET THAT NEVER WAS 87 

King, I remarked, would probably not care for 
the Post-Office Department. 

"Then he should have something else. King is no 
ordinary citizen. He is a very able man and honest. 
I like King and his wonderful method of organiza- 
tion. I shall have to tell 'Ted' Robinson to look into 
it." 



SENATOR LODGE'S FIST FIGHT 

YOU do not mean that? Why that is even better 
than I thought! You know the papers said the 
pacifist struck the first blow?" 

I had returned to Oyster Bay from Washington 
via Boston, and had the "inside" story of Senator 
Henry Cabot Lodge's fist fight with a pacifist, and 
the effect it had had on the Senator's constituents. 

"The folks down Massachusetts way are amazed 
and pleased," I told the Colonel. "If Lodge were a 
candidate for anything to-morrow, he'd carry even 
South Boston — and that, normally, is six to one 
Democratic." 

"That is splendid," said the Colonel. "Now, do I 
understand you right — Lodge hit this fellow im- 
mediately he called him a coward? Is that right?" 

"Yes, sir, as I get it, and I'm sure of my facts; 
he got in the first wallop. That is why he refused to 
prosecute the man. 

"The funniest thing is Lodge's home paper, the 
Lynn Item. This has always been a sort of organ of 
his, treating him with respect, almost to the point 
of awe. It's been picturing him in ring togs as 'the 
Nahant Kid,' with huskies removing his victim by 
head and heels. Ever>'body is tickled silly with the 





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EN ROUTE FOR THE TROPICS 



SENATOR LODGE'S FIST FIGHT 89 

idea of the Senator developing a wallop in his old 
age." 

"I must say that I share their sentiments, though 
I am not exactly surprised at his resenting an in- 
sult," said the Colonel. "He's not like some men 
you and I know. I '11 admit, however, it is a bit un- 
usual for him to appear in such a role. I 'm not ex- 
actly surprised, and I 'm sure his people would n't 
be if they knew Lodge as well as they think they do. 
If they did, to use your irreverent phrase, they'd 
knov/ him to be 'a regular fellow' in pretty much 
everything. I know you've used that term 'the 
Colonel was in a bantering mood ' — I've heard 
you. 

"His constituents, Hke most other people, think 
of Lodge as ' the scholar in politics,' and it never oc- 
curred to them that a scholar could or would fight. 
In the light of recent performances I do not know 
that I blame them much. 

"Lodge, you know, has always rather cultivated 
that 'scholar in politics' tradition. He's been the 
scholar and he's been in politics, but he's a mighty 
practical man at that. Of course I know they have 
never seen Lodge when he did look the scholar part. 
If there was any fault in his make-up, he was too 
well groomed. He has, however, been, to once more 
use your irreverent description, a 'regular fellow,' 



go TALKS WITH T. R. 

and he has taken good care of his physical self. He 
does not look the athlete, but he's more powerful 
physically than he looks. 

"Of course Lodge will fight. He's never had real 
occasion to do so until this fellow came along. Then 
he did as he always did — a first-class job. Of course 
he did not knock him out, but he did a good job just 
the same. 

"The 'scholar' tradition about Lodge has always 
amused me. He's no bookworm. He is the student, 
yes, but he's also the Senator from Massachusetts 
— do not forget that. I do not suppose your friends 
in Boston ever think of Lodge running about on 
errands for his constituents as other Senators and 
Representatives have to. Well, he does as much of 
that as any man I know. 

"When I was President he'd come to me on all 
sorts of errands for Democrats and Republicans 
alike. I once asked him why it was that he had all 
the unpleasant things to take care of for Massachu- 
setts, pardons and that sort of thing. He told me he 
supposed it was because the persons bringing them 
to him could not be sure others would attend to them. 
It involved a lot of hard work, much of it for people 
who would probably be out fighting him the next 
day, but that did not matter; at least it did not 
seem to. 



SENATOR LODGE'S FIST FIGHT 91 

"Lodge and I were friends long before he went to 
the Senate or I to the White House. He was helpful 
to me before I was President, but more so after I 
became President. I could depend on him to think 
clearly and to give me of his best — he was abso- 
lutely unselfish about it, too. 

"Some persons were foolish enough to think we 
would break because he supported Taft in 19 12. 
There never was the remotest chance for that. I 
knew where Lodge stood and respected his position ; 
he knew my situation and respected it. There never 
was a chance of a personal falling-out. Placed as he 
was. Lodge could not have acted differently, and 
I 'm glad that he did n't. 

"I am glad he had this fight. I suppose approval 
is what would be expected of so truculent a person 
as I am. I 'm not surprised nor am I surprised at the 
way his constituents look at it. Everybody admires 
manliness, just as every manly man despises the 
fellow who won't fight when he has due provocation. 
Have you heard what Lodge thinks of the response 
at home?" 

"Yes," said I. "He has a roomful of letters and 
telegrams commending him. Publicly he deprecates 
the affair; privately I think he is pleased. However, 
here's what he said to one Boston man: 

"'It's a remarkable commentary on American 



92 TALKS WITH T. R. 

public opinion that after a lifetime spent in public 
service and about the time I am ready to pass on, 
satisfied that I have done some things my children 
won't be ashamed of, the public suddenly discovers 
I am a great man when I commit a breach of the 
peace.' " 

"The dear old Brahmin," exclaimed the Colonel, 
laughing; "that's just like him. The 'scholar in 
politics' simply could n't bring himself to saying he 
had indulged in a fist fight." 



ROOSEVELT'S ONE TALK WITH 
MR. WILSON 

IF any other man in the world had talked to me as 
Mr. Wilson did, I would say I was sure to go. 
But it was Mr. Wilson who was talking and I am not 
at all confident." 

So Colonel Roosevelt summarized his visit to the 
White House April 7, 191 7, to plead for permission 
to go abroad at the head of fighting troops. 

It was the Colonel's first and only interview with 
Mr. Wilson and followed an unsuccessful effort to 
find Mr. Wilson in. The first call was made as the 
Colonel was en route for home from a devil-fishing 
trip in Florida waters, and the President was actu- 
ally and not constructively absent from the White 
House. 

Like the first call, the second was unannounced. 
It was decided upon April 5, when the Colonel told a 
few intimates, including the members of the "news- 
paper cabinet," of his intention to leave for Washing- 
ton the next day. 

" I am," said he, "making no headway, and I won't 
so long as I try to do business with Mr. Wilson by 
letter. It's too easy to shunt me one side. He won't 
find it so easy talking to me face to face. I am not at 



94 TALKS WITH T. R. 

all sure he'll give in to me then, but I '11 give him an 
argument anyway." 

"Have you," I asked, "arranged for an appoint- 
ment?" 

" I have not and I won't," he replied. "One of my 
friends has advised that I do so, as otherwise I invite 
a snub. What do you think of that?" 

"Foolishness," I answered. "I do not believe Mr. 
Wilson, however he may feel, can afford to refuse to 
see a former President of the United States calling 
to offer his aid in time of war. I do not think there's 
a chance for a snub." 

"Exactly. I'll take my chances on his trying to 
snub me. He can't do it! I'd like to see him try 

it!" 

By arrangement, "the cabinet" made no mention 
of the Colonel's intentions or of his departure for 
Washington. On his arrival in the Capital the fact 
that he was there was wired the outer world, but 
nothing definite was said of his intentions. 

"If possible," he said, "I want to avoid any ap- 
pearance of storming the White House." 

Whatever the Colonel's intentions were as to 
"storming the White House," he did succeed in 
making the home of his daughter, Mrs. Longworth, 
the real centre of life while he remained in the city. 
From early morning until late at night there was a 



T. R.'S ONE TALK WITH WILSON 95 

constant stream of visitors, not all of whom suc- 
ceeded in getting an audience. 

Among those who did were the Ambassadors of 
the Great Powers, led by Jusserand of the famous 
"Tennis Cabinet," Spring-Rice, the Englishman, 
and little Sato from Japan; army officers of high 
rank, chancing the ill-will of the Administration; 
naval officers; and men of both parties in House 
and Senate! — including, of course, Lodge of Mas- 
sachusetts. 

Secretary of War Baker also came — of his own 
instance, or, as the Colonel put it, "under his own 
steam." 

Some of the earlier callers had a considerable wait 
while the Colonel was at the White House, whither 
he repaired alone, promptly after breakfast. Mr. 
Wilson, who had been advised of his presence in 
Washington, was waiting for him when he called, 
and, as the Colonel told me later, the interview was 
pleasant but inconclusive. 

"He received me very pleasantly," said the 
Colonel, " and we had an hour's talk. I congratulated 
him upon his war message and told him it would 
rank with the world's great state papers if it were 
made good. 

"And I told him I wanted a chance to help him 
make it good. 



96 TALKS WITH T. R. 

"I found that, though I had written plainly 
enough, there was confusion in his mind as to what 
I wanted to do. I explained everything to him. He 
seemed to take it well, but — remember, I was talk- 
ing to Mr. Wilson. 

"I gave out a statement to the newspaper boys 
at the White House. I told him as I was about to 
leave that I knew I would be bombarded with ques- 
tions and asked if he cared to allow me to say any- 
thing. He outlined what he was willing to have told 
of our conversation and I asked that Tumulty, who 
was called in at this time, come along with me while 
I was making it so that there could be no mistake 
or dispute as to what I might say. 

"Tumulty, by way of a half joke, said he might go 
to France with me. I said, ' By Jove, you come right 
along! I '11 have a place for you.' I would, too, but it 
would n't be the place he thinks. It is possible he 
might be sent along as sort of a watchdog to keep 
Wilson informed as to what was being done. He 
would n't be, though. He'd keep his distance from 
headquarters except when he was sent for." 

"Did you see Baker?" some one asked. 

"No, I have not. I did send word to him that I 
would be glad to see him if he called. He is coming 
here later." 

The Colonel proceeded from this point to make it 



T. R.'S ONE TALK WITH WILSON 97 

clear he did not expect to be allowed to go to France 
unless developments forced Mr. Wilson into letting 
him go. 

" He has promised me nothing definitely," said the 
Colonel ; ' ' but as I have said, if any other man than he 
talked to me as he did I would feel assured. If I talked 
to another man as he talked to me it would mean 
that that man was going to get permission to fight. 

"But I was talking to Mr. Wilson. His words may 
mean much ; they may mean little. He has, however, 
left the door open. 

"The talk was pleasant enough. What I tried to 
do was to impress upon him the need of making our 
full weight felt at the earliest possible moment. 

" I told him we should hit at once and hit hard. 

"He raised the question of equipment. I told him 
what he already knew — that the Allies would give 
me all the equipment needed from their ample stores. 
They have the equipment. They need men. I told 
him it would be preferable to use the English or 
French rifle, first because they are ready, and again 
because to use a different type of rifle and ammuni- 
tion would mean to complicate transport problems 
— might, in fact, leave men helpless in the midst of 
plenty through lack of American ammunition. 

"I explained that all necessary expense could be 
provided for out of private funds. I also explained to 



98 TALKS WITH T. R. 

him that I would not take a man the draft might get. 
The fact that I proposed to use material that other- 
wise would be unavailable seemed new to him. 

"He seemed interested and he asked many ques- 
tions. But I am not allowing myself to become over- 
confident. I do not believe he'll let me go to France 
unless circumstances that may develop later compel 
him to let me go." 

The circumstances the Colonel had in mind were 
the serious shortage of man power in France and the 
collapse of Russia, then unsuspected by the world at 
large, but which he then predicted as almost certain 
to soon occur. 

"The imperative call," said he, "is for men. 
France is bled white. She has not men enough for 
another year. England is doing her share, but she 
cannot do all. 

"Russia is almost hopeless. 

"There is more than a fair chance that Russia will 
go to pieces completely. There is a chance she will 
make a separate peace. This, of course, relieves Ger- 
many of pressure from Russia. It means that the war 
will be prolonged — perhaps for five years. 

"Any early peace must be a German peace — a 
German victory. 

"If the people at large would only realize this, we 
would be all right. As it is we are blundering along 



T. R.'S ONE TALK WITH WILSON 99 

apparently hoping for a bloodless war. If we do not 
wake up, Germany will have won this war, and then 
we will be up against it. 

" I do not think that will be the result — it does 
not seem we are capable of allowing that contingency 
to become a fact, but we must wake up. 

"I told the President that with his permission I 
would submit my plans to Senator Chamberlain and 
Representative Dent and I am going right home to 
do that now. I am also going to send Baker a copy. 

"I had a good talk with Baker — I could twist 
him about my finger could I have him about for a 
while. But he does not realize what he is trying to do. 

"He is exactly the type of man Mr. Wilson wants 
about him. He will do exactly what Mr. Wilson tells 
him to do, he will think exactly as Mr. Wilson wants 
him to think, and when Mr. Wilson changes his mind, 
he will change with him. If Mr. Wilson should agree 
with me to-morrow, Mr. Baker would be perfectly 
sure he always agreed with me. He's a pleasant 
enough type socially, but impossible in his present 
place because he is inefficient and is unable to grasp 
the fact that he is inefficient. 

"He has the blindest faith in the General Staff 
and the graduates of West Point. He does not realize 
that a muttonhead, after an education at West Point 
or Harvard, is a muttonhead still." 



"THE DIVISION" 

THE day the Lusitania was sunk by a German 
submarine, Colonel Roosevelt decided war 
with Germany was inevitable and made his prepa- 
rations accordingly. These preparations consisted in 
laying the groundwork for the division (later an army 
corps) he asked permission to recruit and serve in. 

Colonel Roosevelt told me that, when in June, 
19 1 6, war with Mexico seemed possible, he had 
quietly asked permission to put a division, modelled 
on the old "Rough Rider" idea, into the field. 

"Winslow," said he, in discussing the Mexican 
offer, "came in on this thing more than a year ago. 
He was one of the first to be considered when I de- 
cided to raise the organization. That was at the time 
the Lusitania was sunk. 

"Yes, that was when the thing was born. It was 
planned for use against the Germans." 

"Winslow" was Rear Admiral Cameron McR. 
Winslow, then about to be retired from the navy 
because of the age limit. 

From the day of its birth until the plan was finally 
abandoned, Colonel Roosevelt had the assistance of 
the ablest men in the military service of the United 
States. The work was done quietly, so quietly that 



THE DIVISION loi 

it was not until war threatened with Mexico that 
there was any pubHc intimation that the warrior 
had smelled "the battle from afar." Even then 
there was no hint allowed to reach the public as to 
how nearly complete the plans were or that they 
were originally drawn for use against Germany. 

In this work, the Colonel followed his practice of 
a lifetime — early and careful preparation with the 
utilization of the best brains available. Whatever 
the impression among witlanders, those within the 
circle of Colonel Roosevelt's friendship knew that in 
military as in other matters he invariably relied on 
expert advice. In so far as the army was concerned, 
this was always his. Never popular with the "swivel- 
chair" men, and disliked by others for the "big 
jump" he gave Pershing, he was at all times the ideal 
of the real fighting men in the army. At the hint 
that he saw war coming and was preparing to take 
part in it, these besieged him at Oyster Bay and 
bombarded him with letters. When finally the plan 
was given world-wide publicity, appeals to be 
"counted in" came by cable from army men in 
isolated Siam and far distant Manila, as well as from 
nearer points in Europe. 

In a sense the plan was the old story of the "big 
stick" again, for the central thought was to hit 
quickly and hit hard. 



I02 TALKS WITH T. R. 

Contrary to a widely held belief, Colonel Roose- 
velt at no time asked or expected to be given com- 
mand of the corps or even of a division. 

"I shall be content," he told me, as he did others 
repeatedly, "if I am made the junior brigadier. 

"What I would like to see is two divisions with 
two volunteer and one regular regiment in each bri- 
gade. The regiment that I would raise would be on 
the model of the Rough Riders and the thirty regi- 
ments raised to put down the Philippine rebellion. 
Most of those had young regulars as colonels and a 
sprinkling of regular officers elsewhere. I have asked 
no man to join me who would be in the draft or the 
National Guard, or whose coming would in any way 
interfere with the Administration's plans. My men 
would be of the solid business type, $2500 to $50,000 
a year men. The broncho-buster type will be very 
much lacking. 

"In asking a junior place for myself, I am doing 
what I did in the war with Spain. McKinley offered 
me the colonelcy of the Rough Riders. I declined 
it and asked that the command be given Wood. 
It is worth remembering that my regiment then 
was raised, armed, equipped, drilled, mounted, dis- 
mounted, kept two weeks on transports and put 
through a victorious aggressive fight in which one 
third of its officers and one fifth of its men were 



THE DIVISION 103 

killed or wounded, all within sixty days from the 
time Wood and I were commissioned. 

"Ever since war was declared, I have been urging 
that men be sent over at once — even a small force 
— for the vast moral effect it would have. This, I 
know, is what General Joffre advises. If we can get 
the necessary permission we will speed up on the lines 
followed in getting my old regiment into the field. 
The type of men we will get and intensive training 
will enable us to land in France at a very early date. 

"Some of you boys will wish to come and I will 
take you along, but remember, you '11 then see a side 
of me you have n't seen. It will be hard work." 

Colonel Roosevelt's plan contemplated, as he 
explained, all the advantages of using Guard regi- 
ments as the first (after the few regulars available) 
to be sent across, and none of the unfairness that 
must result in taking the large percentage of men 
with dependents in the Guard from their families. 
Use of the Guard regiments on foreign or semi- 
foreign, such as Mexican Border, work, he always 
opposed. 

"Foolish "and "unjust" were his terms to de- 
scribe the mobilizing of the National Guard on the 
Mexican Border in 1916, when he made application 
for service for himself and the division he had 
planned. 



I04 TALKS WITH T. R. 

"Three fourths of the National Guardsmen have 
no business in this thing," he said. "They are mar- 
ried men with famiHes dependent upon them. In 
the regiment of a cousin of mine, in his company, 
his top sergeant, an Irishman, a mechanic, quits 
$100 a month, and his family will have to try and 
live on $30. Another chap has $85 a month, three 
children, and a wife. They must live on $16 a month 
and his job is gone. 

"Take a captain in this command, another Irish- 
man, McCoy, who used to play football. He's been 
very successful as a lawyer and is earning $18,000 
or so a year. On his docket are fifty-two cases. Now 
the fifty-two cases must go elsewhere and Mrs. 
McCoy will have $3500 to do on instead of $18,000. 
It's a question whether or not he will ever get his 
practice back. There are dozens, scores, hundreds 
of such cases. It is all wrong — it throws too much 
of a load where it does not belong. 

"Now if we had universal military service the men 
to go would be the unmarried fellows of eighteen 
to twenty-eight — poor man's son, rich man's son, 
the grocer's lad, and the millionaire's boy. Quentin 
would be the representative of this family. How 
much better that would be! 

"A single man can always get along. Loss of a job 
is nothing to him. He can always get another start. 



THE DIVISION 105 

He won't be hurt, though he may be inconvenienced. 
It is nonsense to send National Guardsmen of this 
type to guard the border — it is all wrong." 

"That would be a splendid thing to let me print 
now," I suggested. 

"No, no — I cannot say a word for publication 
now. Later — perhaps. If Wilson is wise he will give 
me a commission." 

"How can he do that under the law?" I asked, 
the Colonel being past the age limit fixed in a statute 
he, as President, had aided in placing on the books. 

"How? Has n't he got to have a new law before 
he can raise volunteers?" 

The words were fairly snapped out. It was the 
first intimation that he had found a door through 
which he might enter any army raised for service in 
Mexico or Europe with the division he had in con- 
templation. Something had been printed about this 
— just enough to whet the public interest. 

"We are getting reports from here and there, 
Colonel," I said, "indicating that something of this 
sort is expected of you. We would like very much to 
be able to send out something definite." 

"Impossible," said he. "Don't you see that that 
would at once result in three things: flooding of my 
mail with letters from men wanting to join and im- 
portunities for commissions I would not have to 



io6 TALKS WITH T. R. 

give; all the cranks in the world sending me advice 
and more tangible but useless things; and every 
editorial wit with a two-by-four intellect writing 
'near-bright' editorials about 'Roosevelt Hogging 
the Lime Light ' — * T. R. Seeking the Front Page ' ? 
That is impossible! 

"If there is a call for volunteers — and I think 
there will be — I shall do my duty to the fullest 
extent permitted me. Until then I want to be allowed 
as large a measure of privacy as possible. I want to 
be as free to come and go as you are." 

For several days we sought to get permission to 
print the story of his proposed Mexican division. 
The details — since printed — we knew. We also 
knew, thanks to A. Leonard Smith, of the "news- 
paper cabinet," who was born in the army, that it 
would not be formed on orthodox army lines, having 
an unusual preponderance of cavalry and artillery, 
and a minimum of infantry; that it would be, as an 
officer of engineers described it to Smith "a reen- 
forced division." 

"Colonel Blank was at our place to dinner last 
night," said Smith. "I told him what the Colonel 
had in mind. 

"'Lord!' said he, 'that thing will have a punch 
like an army mule, and the speed of a cyclone. If it 
ever gets under way, it won't stop this side of the 



THE DIVISION 107 

canal. Once started, the rest of the army won't see 
it for dust. Its only weakness may be in supply.'" 

"There will be no difficulty on that score," the 
Colonel said when this was repeated to him. "Sup- 
plies will come through all right. If not, the men I '11 
take along will see that they do. I 've had some ex- 
perience getting through Quartermaster's red tape 
in Cuba." 

As the Colonel had anticipated, definite though 
anonymous statements of his intentions sent many 
persons looking for commissions. Among those go- 
ing to Oyster Bay was Roosevelt's one-time Secre- 
tary of War, "Harry" Stimson, who arrived, un- 
announced, one Sunday afternoon. 

"What is it you want, Harry?" the Colonel asked 
after exchanging the usual greetings. 

"I read in the papers," said he, "that you were 
going to raise a division for service in Mexico. I also 
read that it was a fake. I came down to see if it 
was so." 

"So!" snapped the Colonel; "of course it's so. 
What about it; what do you want to do?" 

"I came to see what I could do to help. I'll do 
anything." 

Thus Stimson, ex-Secretary of War, joined the list 
of men notable in many walks of life who were to 
have gone with Roosevelt to Mexico had he been 



io8 TALKS WITH T. R. 

permitted to go. To Stimson, who knew nothing of 
the plan, he read the roll, as it were — "Bob" 
Bacon, millionaire banker and diplomatist; "Jack" 
Greenway, Yale athlete and best loved of the Rough 
Riders; Rear Admiral Cameron McR. Winslow; 
Seth Bullock, ex-sheriff of Deadwood, when Dead- 
wood was new; Thomas C. Desmond, subway and 
ship builder; and Dan Collier, California miner, 
among those not on the regular army list. As for 
those in the regular establishment, the list read like 
a roll-call of the Army Four Hundred — Sheridan, 
Fitz Lee, Young, Jackson, Chaffee, Mosby, and 
Forrest, to name a few of them. 

"Are you going to arm your cavalry with sabres 
or lances?" Mr. Stimson asked. 

"Certainly not," replied the Colonel. "I'll have 
no time to teach them the use of swords. If they 
require any hand weapon of that sort, I '11 give them 
hatchets. They will at least know how to chop." 

No public announcement was made of his plans by 
Colonel Roosevelt until July 4, when, speaking to 
"my fellow townsmen," he declared his purpose of 
taking some of them with him. Any detailed state- 
ment he barred until after his formal application 
had been filed with the War Department. Two days 
later he gave me, for the group of newspaper men 
assigned to Oyster Bay, permission to "let it drive." 



THE DIVISION 109 

"Use," said he, "no names of officers now in the 
regular establishment. To print them now would be 
to embarrass them. This is a pretty vicious Admin- 
istration, you know. Use the names of Stimson, 
Bullock, and the other civilians. They cannot be 
damaged." 

The Colonel's hope of doing anything with Mexico 
soon evaporated. Less than a fortnight later, when 
he asked how soon the correspondents would leave 
Oyster Bay, I told him the division matter would 
hold them there awhile longer. 

"It will not permit us to drop you," he was told. 

"For the present it will. We won't have war with 
Mexico. This man will never declare war on Mexico. 
The only way that war will come will be by Mexico 
declaring war on us. 

"Later on as election draws near he may do some- 
thing, but — bah ! 

"He is impossible. I never have any patience with 
the man who, after his toes have been tread upon, 
his nose tweaked, his face slapped and spat upon, 
turns on his tormentor and says: 'Beware, sir, lest 
you arouse the lion!'" 

As the Colonel anticipated, the Mexican affair 
fizzled out. The division plans remained intact, how- 
ever, preserved for use against the enemy for whose 
benefit they were first drawn. From time to time 



no TALKS WITH T. R. 

changes were made, until, when early in 191 7 it 
became apparent that our entrance into the war 
could not be much longer delayed, they were again 
brought out, and a new petition to the War Depart- 
ment for permission to raise and equip such a force 
was prepared. 

Quietly the necessary "paper work" of a division, 
enormous in itself, was done under the direction of 
experts, money without limit was pledged from pri- 
vate purses to offset any delay that might accrue 
from temporary lack of government funds, and ten- 
tative arrangement made for such equipment as the 
War Department might lack. 

"They have made ready for nothing; they will be 
short of everything," the Colonel said. "We will, if 
we get the necessary permission, be ready to move 
quickly." 

On February 2, 191 7, two days after Germany 
announced her programme of "ruthless submarine 
warfare," Colonel Roosevelt sent a renewal of his 
offer to raise troops to Mr. Baker. 

When it was filed, the Colonel was scheduled for 
a trip to Jamaica to rest up a bit. This trip he aban- 
doned. 

" I do not expect to get what I ask at this time," 
said he, "but I am determined to use every effort to 
get the necessary permission. I shall not go away, 



THE DIVISION III 

for I feel that I should stand by. Furthermore, my 
letter to Baker cannot be made public by me, and 
if I sailed it might look as though I were going away 
at a time when I should stay at home to be ready if 
wanted. So I shall cancel my passage." 

"I am going to keep at this thing," he said some 
days later when it became apparent the War De- 
partment would be in no haste to grant his request. 
"While nothing may come of it so far as I am di- 
rectly concerned, it may help the country. It is 
helping the country by arousing the interest in pre- 
paredness. But, oh, the pity of it! At war, and the 
President refuses to acknowledge the fact and make 
ready." 

Meantime applications for permission to go along 
with the Colonel piled in from all sides, and from 
men in all walks of life. In Congress, Senator Hard- 
ing, of Ohio, offered an amendment tacked on the 
Army Bill which would permit the Colonel to raise 
a force. This was adopted in the Senate, but hung 
fire in the House. 

To get it through the House, it was suggested to 
the Colonel that the one hundred thousand or more 
men who had then asked to be enrolled, be told to 
write their Congressmen urging its adoption. 

"I cannot write such letters," the Colonel said. 
"It's out of the question." 



112 TALKS WITH T. R. 

This was admitted, but enough was thought of the 
idea to call " Bob " Bacon into consultation on it. Ba- 
con found a quieter way of getting the desired result. 

In San Diego then lived Daniel C. Collier, miner, 
banker, real estate operator, and all-around organ- 
izer. In competition with the Panama Fair in San 
Francisco, he had made a fair in San Diego a big 
success — his specialty seemed to be doing difficult 
things. Collier was of those who were to have com- 
missions in the division. He was called East, told of 
the situation in Congress, and asked to "get busy." 

He did. He worked so quietly that none of the 
Washington correspondents noted him or his ac- 
tivities. The night before the House voted, he left 
Washington, hopeful for the best, but fearing he had 
failed. The day of the vote I met him en route to 
Oyster Bay. 

"I've just heard the vote and am feeling pretty 
good," he said, "but I was n't at all sure we had the 
votes. Just now I 'm not sure the President will act 
under it." 

This also was Colonel Roosevelt's opinion. 

"The vote," said he, "does not mean that I am 
commissioned, not by a jugful. It does open the door, 
but that might have been opened any time Mr. 
Wilson wished it opened." 

The adoption of the Harding amendment served 



THE DIVISION 113 

to increase the flood of offers of men, and the offices, 
opened on Fifth Avenue to handle the correspond- 
ence, did a land-office business. Eventually, as is 
well known, the Colonel had enough volunteers to 
fit out an army corps. At no time, however, was the 
Colonel or those closest to him over-sanguine. 

**I hope for the best, but fear the worst," the 
Colonel told me more than once as the days went on. 
*'I am still exchanging letters with Mr. Baker. 

"He has changed his position so rapidly he re- 
minds one of the fly wheel of an engine. But the dear 
little fellow is not to blame. He's been trying to 
defend a bad case." 

The National Government taking no action, 
Charles S. Whitman, then Governor, offered to aid. 
He offered to make the Colonel a Major-General in 
the National Guard of New York, this on the theory 
that once he was in the Guard, President Wilson 
would permit him to go with it into the national 
service. The Colonel did not think this practical 
— but went to Albany to talk it over with the Gov- 
ernor. He returned practically convinced that the 
scheme was impracticable. 

"We had a pleasant talk," he told me, "but I 
doubt if anything comes of it. For one thing I do not 
wish to be under obligation to Whitman. If he does 
anything for me, I shall have to do something for 



114 TALKS WITH T. R. 

him and he's wise enough to reahze that. There is 
nothing very disinterested in Mr. Whitman's offer, 
but I do appreciate it just the same." 

Meanwhile men who had sought to go with the 
Colonel were beginning to despair. Many wrote in 
asking what they should do. Among these was one 
from ''Tom" Desmond. Desmond had lined up 
three thousand engineers, the pick of the thirty 
thousand subway-diggers then working in New York, 
this thirty thousand in turn being the cream of the 
heavy construction men in the world. The answer to 
Desmond's letter was the vehicle chosen by the 
Colonel to tell all that it was their duty to get "over 
there" any way they could. 

As originally drafted, this letter, which now hangs 
on the wall of Mr. Desmond's New York office, 
admitted final and complete defeat. Slaght of the 
"newspaper cabinet" pointed this out. 

"That phrase, ' It is to me a matter of the keenest 
regret that I cannot take you in a division to France,' 
is an admission you are beaten," he said. 

"Very well," said the Colonel, "your point is well 
taken. Let us see how we can avoid destroying the 
small hope you think may remain." 

Consequently the letter, on the original of which 
the changes plainly show, as made public read: "It 
will be to me a matter of the keenest regret if I can- 



THE DIVISION 115 

not take you in a division to France." The change 
did not affect the advice to get in. 

This letter, dated May 9, 191 7, was to all intents 
and purposes the end of the movement. A few days 
later there were gatherings of the clan at Oyster Bay 
and in the New York offices of the division. To these 
came among others Seth Bullock, Jack Greenway, 
John M. Parker of Louisiana, "Bob " Carey of Wyo- 
ming, "Dan" Collier of California, Sloane Simpson 
of Texas, J. L. Reeves and H. N. Jackson, teachers 
in Norwich College, Vermont, where Dewey studied, 
Hamilton Fish, Dr. William Jay Schieffelin, " Bill " 
Donovan of New York, "Dave" Goodrich, and 
others. Never, except in a house of death, have I 
noticed a greater air of depression. All except the 
Colonel showed it plainly. He, it was apparent to 
those who knew him best, felt worse than any other. 

"I feel like hell about the whole thing," is the 
way Bullock expressed himself, "and so do the rest 
of us. The Colonel feels worst of all, only he's too 
proud to let on. He may fool some of you boys, but 
he can't fool us. We've tried to tell him there may 
be some way out, but he admits he 's licked and I 
figure it that way too. So I guess this is the end. 
There is no way of getting around the President's 
announcement that he won't act under the Harding 
amendment." 



ii6 TALKS WITH T. R. 

"We must, as loyal American citizens, bow to the 
decision of the commander-in-chief of the army and 
navy, the President," said the Colonel, "so we are 
releasing everybody, returning the money that has 
been subscribed, and telling every one to get in as 
best he can." 

The Colonel was far from thinking he had failed 
entirely. He took immense satisfaction in a Wash- 
ington despatch to the Brooklyn Eagle, describing 
the decision to send troops at once as "a compro- 
mise" between the original plans of the General 
Staff which called for no early movement of troops 
abroad, and the request of the Colonel to be per- 
mitted to take troops abroad. The despatch bore all 
the ear marks of being "inspired." 

"If," said the Colonel, "the despatch gives the 
real explanation of the matter, and I think it does, 
I can say we are all unselfishly pleased to have 
served this use, although, naturally, we regret not to 
have been allowed to go ourselves. It is due the men 
that the full facts should be known. 

"If my request had been granted the various units 
of the first division would begin to assemble to- 
morrow at whatever point the department desig- 
nates. Personally I would have preferred Fort Sill, 
Oklahoma. We were prepared to make good any im- 
mediate lack of supplies. In fifteen days the second 



THE DIVISION 117 

division would have begun to mobilize. At intervals 
of thirty days the others would have mobilized. At 
intervals of thirty days thereafter the commands 
would have been ready to sail for intensive training 
in France. All could have been on the firing-line by 
September i, the time set for the first draft to be- 
come effective. 

"Under the * com.promise ' men go abroad earlier 
than Mr. Baker had intended they should. The 
'compromise,' therefore, is that France gets men 
and Roosevelt stays at home. That is not entirely 
satisfactory to Roosevelt, not by a long shot, but it 
is something. We are not one hundred per cent loss, 
and we have not worked in vain." 

In later talks, the Colonel insisted that "the divi- 
sion" had helped improve the war situation. 

"We did n't get over," he would say, "but we did 
help. Baker has had to do everything I wanted him 
to do and that he said could not be done; we have 
troops in France long ahead of the time they planned 
to send them; we have helped arouse the country. 

"It is the regret of my Hfe that I am not per- 
mitted to serve. Had I been, they would have no 
fear of political glory to be reaped by me, for I 
would never have come back. Had they sense, they 
would have known that." 



THE COLONEL AND JOHN L. SULLIVAN 

OLD JOHN L. has been a greater power for 
good in this country than many a highly re- 
spectable person who would scorn to meet him on 
terms of equality. He has been my friend many 
years, and I am proud to be his." 

That is where John L. Sullivan, once champion 
pugilist of the world, stood in Colonel Roosevelt's 
estimation. 

The old champion, who in his later years knew 
the pinch of need, had come to New York to see the 
Colonel and had an hour of his time while persons 
of real political and social importance waited in an 
anteroom. His object in coming was to offer his aid 
in "getting over" the Colonel's division. When he 
left, it was to return to Boston to hold a mass meet- 
ing in Faneuil Hall to protest against delay in the 
granting of the necessary permission to begin re- 
cruiting. 

"I can't do much," he said, "but I guess we can 
rock old Faneuil Hall just to show that Boston's 
heart is still in the right place." 

" It was mighty decent of old John L. to come over 
to see me," said the Colonel after the meeting. "He 
wants to help. I more than half suspect he needs 



T. R. AND JOHN L. SULLIVAN 119 

help himself, but I would not for the life of me insult 
him by even a hint of an offer. Old John has many 
excellent qualities including a high degree of self- 
respect. He also has a large measure of native ability. 
I know that his former profession is not a very ex- 
alted one, but he was a fair fighter, he never threw 
a fight, and, in his way, he did his best to uphold 
American supremacy. Do you remember his little 
speech when Corbett defeated him — gratification 
that it was an American who whipped him? 

''John's best fight, however, was made after he 
lost to Corbett. I mean his whipping John Barley- 
corn. That was a real victory, and I am proud of him 
for having made it. Since then I believe he has been 
the most effective temperance lecturer I have known 
of. He has been effective because he could appeal to 
classes of men and boys others, however gifted, could 
never hope to reach. His hold on the public has been 
longer maintained than any other champion I ever 
heard of. Men and boys would go to hear him, and 
the old fellow's honesty was convincing. I like John 
for this contribution to good citizenship. 

" I admired him in his prime. He was a good fighter 
and clean. I liked his willingness to meet all comers 
as fast as they came. This marked the real champion 
and explains why, in defeat, he is still a popular idol. 

"John is an old friend. He used to call at the 



I20 TALKS WITH T. R. 

White House occasionally just as he sometimes calls 
at Sagamore Hill. Once he called at the White House 
on a personal matter — he told my secretary it was 
personal and I saw him at once. After we had shaken 
hands, he laid a heavy black cigar on the desk. 

"'Have a cigar, Mr. President,' he said. 

"I told him I did not smoke. 

'"Have another — give 'em to a friend,' he re- 
plied, laying another on the desk. 

"The social amenities having been attended to, I 
asked what I could do for him. 

"'I come to see you about a nephew,' said he, 
*my favorite nephew. He is in the navy and in 
trouble.' 

"John explained that he had enlisted in the 
Marines, got into trouble of some sort, and deserted, 
for which he was sentenced to a dishonorable dis- 
charge. 

'"Now, Colonel,' said he, 'that's something we 
can't have. We don't want anything like that in our 
family. He's a good boy. Colonel, just a trifle wild. 
I wish you could have him in hand a little while. 
You 'd fix him. 

'"It's a tough case, too, Colonel,' he went on. 
'Here's this boy, my favorite nephew; I've done 
everything for him, but he does n't do anything for 
himself. Why, he even went and took up music* 



T. R. AND JOHN L. SULLIVAN 121 

"John did not explain whether he had taken up 
vioHn or barrel-organ, but he left no doubt that he 
felt this was beneath the Sullivan dignity." 

"What became of the boy, Colonel?" I asked. 

"The boy was all right. I was glad to do what I 
could for John. Since then he's told me the boy has 
done well. I failed to ask, however, if he persisted 
in music." 

On another occasion I called at the Harvard Club 
by appointment to get the news of the day as re- 
garded the "division." The Colonel had none. 

"I have had but two visitors to-day," he said, 
"Archbishop John Ireland and John L. Sullivan, 
both, as you know, old friends. And would you be- 
lieve it, these young barbarians, fresh from the re- 
fining influences of my venerable Alma Mater, paid 
more attention to the pugilist than they did to the 
prelate! Had they known that John Ireland had a 
record as a first-class fighting man in the army and 
since, it might have been different. As it was, to talk 
straight New York, they 'fell for the fighter, but 
could n't see' the man of the Church. 

"It might interest you to know that old John and 
the Archbishop are rather good friends. Their com- 
mon interest is temperance, and they had a real 
good chat. John thinks the Archbishop is all right, 



122 TALKS WITH T. R. 

and the Archbishop respects John's good quaHties. 
Under other conditions the Archbishop thinks John 
might have made a splendid churchman. I don't. 
John was intended for a prize-fighter, and it would 
have been too bad to spoil the best fighter of them 
all and make, perhaps, a second-rate clergyman, 
with, probably, less real power for good than old 
John has exercised. I told His Grace this, but of 
course he could not be expected to concede as much 
as that. He does, however, think well of John. 

"Of course it may be said that Sullivan was better 
than his profession. This, in large measure, is true. 
I liked old Bob Fitzsimmons, but as a man he was 
not to be compared to Sullivan — he had the fighting 
instinct all right, but he lacked Sullivan's brain. 
Sullivan has had little more schooling than Fitz, but 
he has profited more by his travels and he is better 
informed on most matters than most men who have 
had no better opportunity in school work than he 
has had 

"That, however, is not the secret of his holding 
his own with the public. That's to be explained by 
his rugged honesty and the fact that he was a cham- 
pion who was always willing to fight. 

"After all, there is a lot of the primal man in 
most of us." 



THE NEWSPAPER CABINET 

ALL the world knows of the Roosevelt "Tennis 
. Cabinet." Few, even in the larger newspaper 
offices, knew much if anything of the Roosevelt 
"Newspaper Cabinet." 

Occasionally a visiting statesman or politician re- 
turning from Oyster Bay would have some mention 
to make of the group to which he had been intro- 
duced by the Colonel or marvel at the freedom with 
which the Colonel discussed matters of the gravest 
importance with what one Senator called "news 
hounds." Sometimes a managing or city editor, or a 
magazine editor, would hear something of it and try 
to get the story, but none ever succeeded. Those 
within the circle would not write it, and those with- 
out could not. 

Being refused a story is no novelty to most edi- 
tors. The "cabinet," however, was a real novelty to 
many of the Colonel's visitors. 

"I can readily understand the Colonel or any 
other man having a man on a paper especially 
friendly to him from whom he would keep very 
little," said a member of Congress leaving " the hill " 
one afternoon, "but I cannot understand his talking 



124 TALKS WITH T. R. 

so freely to so many reporters. Of course I know 
T. R. knows his business, but — " 

"These men you met to-day are all old friends 
of the Colonel ; he knows they would not turn on 
him," I said. "For that matter if one became in- 
clined to do so, he would not dare break. It would 
finish him professionally, or come so near to it, he 
would be most uncomfortable. You see he'd have 
not only the Colonel to deal with, but his associates 
as well." 

"I understand that," he answered, "but this is 
what I do not understand: In that group to-day 
there was a Hearst man (William Hoster) and a 
World man (John W. Slaght). Hearst I know hates 
the thought of Roosevelt. We all know the Colonel 
has been as bitter toward Mr. Pulitzer as the World 
in turn has been against him. Now, how can he feel 
safe with those men in what he calls ' the cabinet'? " 
"That is easy to answer," I said. " Hoster, of the 
American, is the one man in the Hearst organization 
w^ho can always get to T. R. and whom he trusts 
implicitly. Slaght, of the World, has been his friend 
since he was Police Commissioner or thereabouts. 
In the bitterest days of the Panama Canal contro- 
versy, Slaght had his confidence, and was persona 
grata. The World knew this, understood it perfectly, 
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THE NEWSPAPER CABINET 125 

patible with his self-respect. Had he done so, it 
would have fired him. 

"So Hoster sits in, and Slaght, as you saw to-day, 
is on the closest terms with the Colonel." 

"But there were things said to-day that the World 
would give much for. Isn't it Slaght's duty to turn 
that stuff in?" 

"Not at all. He's there as the Colonel's friend; 
what he knows, unless it is otherwise agreed, is not 
to be printed and that settles it." 

"But," the Congressman persisted, "of what 
value is that to the World?" 

" Of this value: Slaght at all times knows, or is in a 
position to know, the facts in any matter the Colonel 
may be interested in. This enables it to avoid serious 
error that other papers sometimes fall into. It also 
leaves it in a position to know what to look for. In 
a word, it is insurance against error and a guarantee 
that it will be in a position to intelligently handle 
any story that may arise as well as prepare for things 
in the future. The Colonel on his part does not object 
to this. He would rather have the front page than 
the editorial page any day, and he 'd rather have a 
friendly pen deal with him in a paper editorially un- 
friendly than one neutral or unfriendly." 

"You say it well," said the Congressman, "but if 
you ever mention me to the Colonel, tell him I mar- 



126 TALKS WITH T. R. 

vel at this arrangement. To most men it would be 
suicidal." 

I did mention the conversation to the Colonel the 
next day as we sat in the library. 

"He means all right," he said, "but he does not 
understand. He 's not the first man to doubt the wis- 
dom of having Jack Slaght about. Jack is pure gold 
— a bit querulous at times, but always trustworthy. 
I Ve told Slaght many a thing he could have sold for 
ten thousand dollars, but I never thought he'd sell 
it and I'm sure he did not. I have not held him 
responsible for what the World might say about me 
any more than Pulitzer held him responsible for 
what I said about the World. 

' ' What our friend does not appreciate is that ' the 
cabinet' is a picked crew. It's as valuable to me — 
more so — than I am to it." 

As the Colonel said, "the cabinet" was made up 
of picked men. They were the survivors of the army 
of reporters who, beginning in the days when Oyster 
Bay sported one or two rickety horse cabs and only 
one telephone, had driven up the slope of Sagamore 
Hill. Of these, many called but once or twice. Others 
had gone into other callings — notably Robert E. 
Livingston, of the Herald, and Edward G. Riggs, of 
the Sun, dean of all political reporters; others had 
passed on. Of the many, there were a few upon whom 



THE NEWSPAPER CABINET 127 

their papers depended for all Roosevelt matters, men 
who at various times, mainly during campaigns and 
in the summers when Oyster Bay was the National 
Capital, had been stationed there. Gradually other 
newspaper men began to lean on these, the more so 
as in his later years the Colonel sought (in vain, to 
be sure) that private life he hoped would be his when 
he left the White House. 

In these latter days not every reporter could see 
the Colonel. This was due as much to the fact that 
many were sent to him on what he called "fool 
errands" as to the desire for a little privacy. Many 
of those who did see him found him not at all respon- 
sive. The exact truth is, popular opinion to the con- 
trary, Colonel Roosevelt was not a publicity-seeker. 
When he had anything to say he said it, but he did 
not grant one in a thousand of the interviews sought 
from him. In the closing years "no interviews" was 
his rule, a rule seldom broken. 

Under these conditions, even in the last campaign 
(191 6), the number of newspaper men persona grata 
at Sagamore Hill was limited. In this group were 
Slaght and Hoster above mentioned; Rodney Bean, 
of the New York Times, whose place was later taken 
by A. Leonard Smith; Phil Thompson, resident cor- 
respondent; Perry Arnold, of the United Press; Ed 
Moier, of the Associated Press; Napoleon Alexan- 



128 TALKS WITH T. R. 

der Jennings, of the Herald, and Charles Divine of 
the Sun, whose place was later filled by Thoreau 
Cronyn. These, with myself and with Colonel Mi- 
chael E. Hennessey, of the Boston Glohe, as a non- 
resident member, made up the cabinet. At times 
other newspaper men for whom some one or all of 
the group could vouch, or from other cities, would 
sit in, but always with the understanding that they 
would be guided in their writing by what the others 
would advise. 

"These gentlemen understand me perfectly," he 
would say to the stranger, "and they know what is 
permissible to print. Just consult with them and you 
will be all right. 

"Now we will discuss this matter in cabinet," he 
would go on. "When we are through we will decide 
what if anything can be printed. I 'm not sure that 
we will want to print anything, but you want the 
facts for your guidance." 

This would be the start of a discussion of some 
matter in the news or likely to be in the news. In the 
course of this, the Colonel would be most frank, par- 
ticularly if there were no strangers present whom he 
had not tested out. On their part the correspondents 
would be equally frank in their criticisms and sugges- 
tions, and in offering bits of information bearing on 
the subject in hand. 



THE NEWSPAPER CABINET 129 

"All right," the Colonel might say as the discus- 
sion ended, perhaps at the stroke of the dinner gong, 
" take this down and we will see how it sounds," 
and proceed to dictate a statement. 

"This" might sound all right and it might not; 
changes of a word here and there would, as likely 
as not, be suggested, and when each had had his 
say, the Colonel would give his final assent to pub- 
lication. Or at his suggestion the matter would be 
held up indefinitely — the entire talk being held as 
"in cabinet." 

The visiting reporter who really knew his business 
more often than not waited at the little Oyster Bay 
Inn for the "cabinet" to return, confident that a 
franker discussion might result if he were not pres- 
ent, and that, under the rules, he would get every- 
thing printable, though he might not get all that was 
said. 

So far as I know but one man, who must be name- 
less in his shame, ever outraged this hospitality of 
the Colonel. He did it once. Before he could again 
visit "the hill," he was notified not to return. The 
offence was flagrant and indefensible. Not long after 
the man retired from newspaper work to write fic- 
tion. His successor, an old friend of the Colonel, was 
heartily welcomed, but stopped abruptly when he 
started to apologize for what had happened. 



I30 TALKS WITH T. R. 

"You need not apologize for your office and you 
cannot apologize for him," said the Colonel. "You 
come in on the most favored nation basis. While I 'm 
rather sorry for the poor fool — he 's more fool than 
crook — I'm glad his going has sent you here." 

The unexpected result of one cabinet meeting was 
the basis of the charge, oft repeated by men not in 
the newspaper world, or if in, not of it, that it was 
the Colonel's habit to repudiate interviews and state- 
ments if it was to his benefit to do so. Such a practice 
could not long obtain with Colonel Roosevelt or any 
other public man, however dishonest, and Colonel 
Roosevelt was basically and intrinsically honest in 
all things. 

At the meeting in question, attended by repre- 
sentatives of the morning papers. Colonel Roosevelt, 
then President, took up the question of the Philip- 
pine friars, at that time very much in the news. To 
the men present the Colonel explained conditions in 
the islands as shown by reports from men in and out 
of office, making the point that the situation would 
clear up easier if the Roman Catholics of the United 
States, and for that matter the rest of the world, 
had competent knowledge of the facts. 

These facts, he proceeded to develop, were that 
the Philippine friar as he then existed was at no 
time to be mentioned in the same breath as the 



THE NEWSPAPER CABINET 131 

Roman Catholic clergy in the United States. Were 
this generally understood, even by the clergy here, 
he said, the situation would be easier to clear up to 
the satisfaction of all. Illustrating these statements, 
Colonel Roosevelt cited various cases that showed 
the friars in some instances, at least, to be a highly 
undesirable lot. At the same time he was careful to 
point out that not all of the Philippine clergy were 
"tarred with this stick," paying a high compliment 
to the Archbishop of Manila and others to whom 
the charges against the friars would not apply. 

All this, it was stipulated, was not for publication. 

That evening after dinner the morning paper men 
to whom the Colonel had made this story sat on the 
porch of the little Oyster Bay hotel and discussed 
the meeting of the afternoon. First one statement, 
then another of the Colonel's was taken up; this 
point and that analyzed and emphasized; some of 
the Colonel's stories were repeated. Unknown to 
these men, the local man for an evening paper was 
sitting near by in the shadow. While they talked, he 
took mental notes, and when they retired for the 
evening card game, he retired to put the story on 
paper. The next evening practically everything the 
Colonel had said was printed in interview form in 
his journal. 

As might have been expected, the result was a 



132 TALKS WITH T. R. 

sensation. From one end of the country to the other 
came calls for a verification of the interview or more 
on the same lines. The morning paper men had tele- 
phone calls for explanations. They could, under the 
circumstances, do nothing but denounce the inter- 
view. 

Meantime the Colonel was busy. To Sagamore 
Hill the correspondent of the morning edition of the 
paper printing the story was called. He explained 
that he knew nothing of the matter, that he had no 
connection with the evening edition and had not 
talked with any one on it. 

"I am glad to know that," the Colonel told him; 
"it is as I thought. I shall have to repudiate the 
interview, for I made no such talk to whoever wrote 
that article, and to nobody for publication. It was, 
as you know, entirely in confidence. I have talked 
this matter over with no one from that paper and I 
shall say so." 

This he did, and when the full facts developed, 
there was neither resentment nor criticism in news- 
paper circles. Nor was there any sympathy for the 
young man who found himself repudiated. By eaves- 
dropping he had placed himself in a position where 
he was entitled to neither courtesy nor considera- 
tion; he knew or should have known that he was 
listening to a discussion of a confidential matter. So 



THE NEWSPAPER CABINET 133 

far as the Colonel was concerned, he was entirely 
within his rights and the truth in denying the au- 
thenticit>'^ of the interview. 

I have in the course of many years tried to find 
the basis for the charge that Colonel Roosevelt was 
ever unfair to the interviewer. The foregoing is the 
only incident I have been able to find. On this slen- 
der foundation of fact the elaborate structure of 
misstatement was, I am sure, built. 

There were times when, in order to keep out of the 
newspapers. Colonel Roosevelt gave orders that all 
newspaper men be barred from "the hill." The few 
to whom these orders did not apply came, not as 
newspaper men, but as friends. 

One occasion on which such an order issued was 
immediately after Judge Hughes was nominated. 
Calling the correspondents then on duty at Oyster 
Bay, including a majority of "the cabinet," the 
Colonel told them they must not call any more ; that 
he was once more a private citizen and must be 
treated as such. They protested that this could not 
be; that the public clamored for news of him, and 
their papers, anxious to meet the demand, would not 
consent to recalling them. 

It was of no use for Colonel Roosevelt to explain 
that by remaining in the limelight he would injure 
Judge Hughes's chances; that he did not propose to 



134 TALKS WITH T. R. 

do this, and that by remaining, the boys would 
only embarrass him. An impasse developed, in con- 
sequence of which the correspondents, barred from 
"the hill," picketed the estate and the Oyster Bay 
station, planning in this way to get lines on the 
Colonel's political visitors and on what he was doing 
in a political way. 

This was the situation when I arrived at Oyster 
Bay from Chicago. The men at the station told me 
Sagamore Hill had been closed to them as reporters. 

"T. R. was very nice about it," they said, "but 
he said that while he would welcome us older men 
as friends, he would have no welcome for us as 
reporters." 

On the theory that being fresh from the conven- 
tion, the Colonel would not object to my calling, I 
drove to Sagamore Hill. As I arrived, James R. 
Garfield, of the "Tennis Cabinet," and another 
friend were leaving. 

"By George! this is fine," the Colonel exclaimed, 
introducing me to Garfield, whom I had met before, 
but who did not remember me. "You can trust this 
man absolutely," he declared. "He is one of the salt 
of the earth, if salt can be considered plural. I am 
glad you came. 

"But," he added as Garfield left, "you know I am 
not seeing reporters. Of course you did not know that . ' ' 



i 



THE NEWSPAPER CABINET 135 

"Yes, I did, Colonel," I answered, "but I thought 
you might possibly wish to see me, and, anyway, I 
wished to tell you how sorry I am you were not 
named and to say good-bye." 

"That's splendid of you," he answered. "Come 
into the library." 

In the library John McGrath and Walter Hayes, 
his secretaries, were waiting with a mass of mail. 
Hayes also had a wire from Mrs. Douglas Robinson. 

"Now what do you think of that.'^" the Colonel 
demanded. "My sister, you know, the dearest girl 
in the world, but ignorant as a babe on politics. 
Thinks, I suppose, the world 's going to come to an 
end because I was not nominated. Hayes, try and 
get her to come out with Mr. Robinson. She wants 
to console me, and I shall have to console her and 
explain that nothing awful has happened me." 

I at once took up the matter of the embargo. 

"The station is picketed," I explained. " I am sorry 
to say, too, that some of the boys have elected to 
picket the foot of the hill. It should be possible to 
make some arrangement more pleasant all around." 

I mention this incident in answer to those who 
have pictured Colonel Roosevelt as stubborn and 
unreasonable and difficult to advise. 

"I noticed the pickets," said he, "and I did not 
like to see them. But really there is no use in their 



136 TALKS WITH T. R. 

coming here for news. I wish to be treated as any 
other private citizen." 

"Yes, Colonel," said I, "you know and I know 
that, but the public refuses to consider you a private 
citizen and, frankly, you are not; at least not yet." 

"All right, then, let us fix it this way. Let one of 
you elder members of the cabinet come up here each 
evening. I will tell him the news, but it must not be 
printed as coming from me. There will be times when 
you will not wish to print the names of all my callers. 

"For example, I was sorry yesterday to see that 
the boys said Leonard Wood called. With this Ad- 
ministration lying awake nights for a chance to 
break him and deprive him of his livelihood — Wood 
is rather too old to start in another line now — it 
would be easy to get him into trouble. You boys, 
I know, would regret that; you would not intention- 
ally get any decent citizen into trouble. 

"Will that arrangement be satisfactory?" 

I said it would, and the new arrangement went 
into effect at once, the first call being planned for 
the next night when I was to meet him in the Hotel 
Langdon, his New York City home. 

I found him there looking tired and flushed after 
a hard day in the city, and, I thought, reaction from 
the strain of the convention. Of news he had none. 
The next day we learned, when a physician was 



THE NEWSPAPER CABINET 137 

called to attend him on a pier whither he had gone 
to welcome Kermit home, that he was ill. It was 
explained he had strained some tendons on his left 
side coughing. 

On the following day several physicians looked 
him over and we learned he had a light attack of 
dry pleurisy. At his request I called at the hotel that 
evening. 

" I've sent for you," he told me, "because I know 
the boys have confidence in you and will take your 
word, your advice, on my condition. I don't want 
alarming stories in the papers. If you could fix it, 
I would prefer nothing be said, but I know you can- 
not, and perhaps total silence, any attempt to sup- 
press, would be the worst thing I could do. But I 
don't want any 'Roosevelt Critically 111' headlines 
that will scare my friends to death. I 'm not afraid 
of the boys' reports, but it's the headline fellows. 

"All the trouble I ever have with the papers is of 
their making. Friends come to me and say, 'Those 
reporters.' But it is n't the reporters. Ninety-nine 
times out of a hundred they are correct to a *T.'" 

I explained that the boys understood perfectly; 
that Slaght had taken the trouble to consult one of 
the best physicians in New York, Dr. Charles H. 
Goodrich, of Brooklyn, and been told by him that 
pleurisy per se was annoying rather than serious. 



138 TALKS WITH T. R. 

"That's bully of Slaght. Just like him. Do you 
know he's a splendid fellow? Now his paper hates 
me, hates me bitterly. But Slaght has ever been uni- 
formly kind and courteous. He 's square all the way 
up. I like him, he's my friend. That's one thing lots 
of people can't understand, why I have anything to 
do with a man placed like Slaght. They don't know 
that being decent is not dependent on one's par- 
ticular position." 

I told the Colonel that if he wished I would see 
every night editor in town — the boys would have 
gone home by the time I could get back downtown 
— but I advised against doing so. 

"Ha, ha, 'methinks the lady doth protest too 
much,'" he quoted. "You are right and I am sorry 
to have troubled you. Truly, I will be glad when 
people will recognize me as a private citizen and the 
papers treat me as such." 

"That time," I replied, "will never come in your 
life. Twenty years from now if I am alive I expect 
to go to Oyster Bay now and then on a T. R. assign- 
ment." 

"That is just it — your city editors want that 
sort of thing. But I do wish — and I say this in all 
sincerity — I wish to be as any other man — I am 
in private life, and sooner or later even your hard- 
hearted bosses will recognize that." 



THE NEWSPAPER CABINET 139 

Three days later the Colonel again asked when 
the correspondents would leave Oyster Bay. 

"How much longer do you boys expect to be 
here?" he asked. 

" On a guess, ten days — until after your letter 
to the Progressive National Committee is made 
public." 

"Fine. Then I shall be left alone." 

"Colonel, I don't think so. There's one thing you 
don't realize — the biggest tribute yet paid you, 
but unnoticed by you and about every one else. It 
is the presence of these men." 

"I don't understand you," and he looked as 
though he suspected I thought I was honoring him 
by calling. 

" It is this. Here you are a defeated man. You are 
by your own word out of politics. You ask to be left 
alone. In the face of that, the New York papers and 
the great press associations are keeping here a 
stronger force than is with Mr. Hughes. That's not 
because our city editors are crazy or hero- worship- 
pers or particular friends of yours. It is because they 
realize the hold you have on the American people. 
It's the tribute of the people to the man, for, after 
all, we only give the public what it wants. 

"I have never seen or heard of anything like it 
in my twenty-five years in the newspaper business. 



I40 TALKS WITH T. R. 

The popular cry always is, 'The King is dead, long 
live the King.' This 'King* is not dead. I tell you, 
the people are with you. That is why we are here/' 

The Colonel listened to this, the longest speech 
I ever attempted on him, without an interruption 
— something unusual when one was tempted to be 
long-winded. 

"Leary, I thank you," this with every evidence of 
being touched. "The people are with me because 
they know I am the one man in America who stands 
for a definite thing. It's the thing and not the man." 

Ten days later the boys began to leave one by one, 
only to return intermittently or call at his New York 
offices the days he would be due in town. More often 
than not they secured nothing for publication, but 
they were glad to see him, and he them. Between 
them there was that "common interest" he some- 
times declared to be so necessary to enable men to 
work together. All were his friends, and he theirs. 

This affinity of the newspaper men for Colonel 
Roosevelt was not confined to New York members 
of the craft. By that strange freemasonry^ obtaining 
in the profession, reporters in San Francisco, Port- 
land, Maine, and way stations in between, knew 
they were sure, if the occasion ever offered, of a fair 
deal; that while he could not be depended upon for 
the desired interview, he would always see them, 



THE NEWSPAPER CABINET 141 

thereby protecting them against what every reporter, 
however blase, dreads — the necessity of reporting 
failure to see his man. 

They also knew he would protect them in other 
ways; as, for example, at a dinner given him by 
the Illinois Bar Association. To it journeyed several 
members of "the cabinet," only to be barred at the 
last moment. The meal was partly served when the 
Colonel's secretary, McGrath, told him about it. 
Immediately the Colonel arose as if to leave the 
table, declared the reporters were in and of his 
party, and he proposed to join them in the grill- 
room below where they were dining a la carte. 

Join them he did, returning to the banquet hall 
only after the spokesman for the Association apolo- 
gized for the slight and arranged, not only for the 
reporters to be in for the speech-making, but to have 
a special supper after their work was done. To this 
half a score of Chicago reporters were bidden, and 
the Colonel sat at the head of the table. 

Incidents of this sort made every reporter assigned 
to the Colonel a Roosevelt worshipper, a fact that 
unfriendly editors complained of time after time. 
The mere changing of men did not suffice — in a 
few days the new man was as unable to write anti- 
Roosevelt stuff as his predecessor had been. 

Which explains the dialogue overheard by a taxi- 



142 TALKS WITH T. R. 

driver, taking two reporters from Sagamore Hill the 
day its master left it on his last journey. 

"Brace up, Phil," said one; "we'll soon be in 
town. Pull yourself together." 

"Shut up, you damn fool!" blubbered the other; 
"you're crying just as hard as I am." 



CHILDREN OF THE CRUCIBLE 

THERE must be radical changes in our immi- 
gration laws and in our treatment of the immi- 
grant once he is admitted. The ** melting-pot" has 
not proven a failure. It has been overloaded and it 
has not had proper attention. We have been too care- 
less in admitting immigrants and we have not done 
our full duty by them. 

"The fault is ours as much as theirs and the 
troubles we are now having are a consequence." 

Colonel Roosevelt was speaking of the famous 
appeal, "Children of the Crucible," issued in Sep- 
tember, 191 7, at a time when pacifists, pro-Germans, 
defeatists and propagandists of other types, all aim- 
ing to slow up our prosecution of the war, were mak- 
ing substantial progress among the newly arrived 
and the children of those who had arrived not much 
earlier. 

"Jack," he asked by way of introducing the sub- 
ject, "you are of immigrant stock, are you not?" 

"Sure," said I; "I might be described as being of 
an early Cunard family." 

"Quite so. Then I wonder if you would object to 
my putting your name to an appeal to the foreign- 



144 TALKS WITH T. R. 

born and their children born here to get together 
under the flag and smash these agitators who are 
using them to play Germany's game? The idea is to 
have it issue in the name of men of all races and 
creeds." 

" I '11 sign anything you stand for," I said. 

" I thought you would. We will have a host of real 
names on it, that should carry some weight. What 
we want is that everybody who can will get in and 
behind the Vigilantes — that anti-pacifist group of 
writers, artists, and other patriotic citizens who are 
real 'children of the crucible' and as such have a 
right to expect a hearing from their kind." 

"There is an opportunity for real work there," I 
said. " Between the anti-English agitators among the 
Irish and agitators of all sorts on the East Side, a 
nasty situation has been created that may spell seri- 
ous trouble." 

"That is exactly true. It may well develop serious 
trouble just as it is now an embarrassment to those 
of us who wish to see this war speeded up. It is part 
of the price we must pay for lax immigration laws 
and our failure — our cowardice, if you wish — in 
declining to adopt reasonable restrictions. Nothing 
has happened or is likely to happen that we did not 
have a right to expect. 

"It has, however, been impossible to make our 



CHILDREN OF THE CRUCIBLE 145 

people see this or to make the friends of the immi- 
grant see that, by keeping too open a door, we were 
doing no real kindness to the mass of immigrants 
already here. Even so broad and enlightened a man 
as Straus [Oscar] could not be made to see that. He 
would not consent to restrictions that would limit 
the flow here from Russia. In common with less en- 
lightened and selfish persons he thought the situa- 
tion would care for itself. 

"Now it has not, and in consequence we find the 
East Side to be the most pro-German section of 
the United States, not even excepting Milwaukee. 
East-Siders will deny that, but you and I know it to 
be the fact that these poor people are being, have 
been, exploited beyond measure by those who have 
not our country's interests at heart, who are, in fact, 
the enemies of our country. 

"This is as much our fault as theirs, first, because 
of our failure to enact and enforce reasonable laws 
for the admission of the immigrant and to keep out 
the undesirable, and second, because by neglecting 
the immigrants we have given them fertile ground 
in which to sow their damnable doctrines. What 
they sow, we will have to reap. 

"More than the immediate effect on the war, we 
must realize that in their resentment the American 
people may set up an anti-alien wave that will work 



146 TALKS WITH T. R. 

untold hardship on everybody — those not of aHen 
birth or blood, but on the whole mass; for it does not 
make for common comfort or safety to have any 
considerable element in the community proscribed 
by the others. Of course, the immediate sufferers 
will be the immigrants. But those of alien stock not 
immigrants will feel it. Resentment of this Irish 
agitation if it comes will probably not affect you seri- 
ously, for your position is secure, but you will feel it 
and your boy, when he gets out to make his way, 
will feel it. Make no mistake about that. 

"Only the other day I was speaking with a Jewish 
friend about this East-Side situation. He regrets it 
as we do, but he did not seem to see where he and his 
are sure to be hurt if these agitators succeed, as they 
seem bent on doing, in making the term Jew syn- 
onymous for pacifism, pro-Germanism, socialism. He 
said, and said very truly, that the Jewish people 
should not as a whole be blamed for the prominence 
of Jewish names in this sort of thing. What he did 
not see is that prejudice and bigotry never discrim- 
inate. If the bigot ever paused to discriminate, he 
would cease to be a bigot. 

"I wish to see nothing like race proscription in 
this country, but we ought to be frank with our- 
selves and recognize that under the surface there is 
considerable anti-Semitic feeling. I believe it was 



CHILDREN OF THE CRUCIBLE 147 

you who told me the Frank case in Georgia was, in 
its final stages, a demonstration of it." 

"That was the conclusion Charley [Charles Willis] 
Thompson and I were forced to accept," I said 

"Thompson's a shrewd fellow and a mighty good 
one," the Colonel went on. " If he said that was the 
state of affairs, I 'd take his word for it. 

"Now that was in Georgia. If I remember rightly 
some of the oldest families in Georgia are Jewish — 
one of Oglethorpe's trustees was a Jew, whose family 
is still prominent in affairs of that State. It is one of 
the last places one would naturally look for that sort 
of thing. Yet the seeds must have been under the 
surface. 

"Our Jewish friends share with us who are non- 
Jewish responsibility for any success these creatures 
may make among the newer Jewish people in this 
country. Like the rest of us, they have assumed that 
once in, the immigrant would be automatically taken 
care of by our admirable institutions and have 
neglected him and left him to his own resources. 
What has been the consequence? The immigrant has 
been and is being exploited. First it was the sweat- 
shop. That is largely done away with. Now it is by 
these political agitators — the Berkmans, Goldmans, 
and I know not who, including some persons with 
American names and some claim to social position. 



148 TALKS WITH T. R. 

"What we should have done, what we must do, is 
see to it that the immigrant is taken in hand and 
given a square deal. We must see to it that a real 
effort is made to Americanize him — he should have 
the opportunity to become Americanized. He should 
be given an opportunity, should be compelled to 
learn the English language, and if at the end of a 
stated period he has failed to do so, he should be 
sent back to the place from which he came. He must 
not be left to the agitator and the demagogue to 
exploit. 

"It is foolish to imagine that the immigrant will 
automatically and of his own will be converted into 
an American by his mere presence among us, so long 
as he comes here in masses, and settles down among 
his own kind, as ignorant of our ways, our customs, 
and our institutions as he is. 

" Nor is it right to criticize the immigrant because 
he forms what we call * foreign ' colonies in our cities. 
It is natural that he should seek his kind. He does 
exactly what Americans do when they go abroad and 
settle in London, Paris, Berlin. Do they scatter? 
They do not. They form colonies just as distinct as 
do the Russian Jew, the Greek, the Armenian, the 
Irish, or the Germans, or, if >ou please, the Chinese; 
they seek their kind. We should see to it that their 
kind becomes our kind. We won't do it by calling 



CHILDREN OF THE CRUCIBLE 149 

them names, we won't do it by maltreating them, 
and we won't do it by neglecting them, 

"Of course, while the war lasts we will have no 
immigration to speak of. Automatically the war has 
restricted it. For a time after the war ends there 
may be, probably will be, little immigration. 

"Immigration, however, will be one of our recon- 
struction problems. It will have to be handled in a 
big way, but with the idea that America comes first, 
and that the time has arrived when we must and will 
be more particular as to whom we admit into our 
house, bearing always in mind that we owe it to the 
alien as well as to ourselves to see to it that he has 
ample opportunity of becoming a real American. 

"All Americans, of whatever stock, should take 
the position toward the country from which they 
sprang that Washington and his associates took 
toward England. They were English, but they did 
not hesitate to fight England. Against them were the 
Tories, the first pacifists the country knew. They 
were against fighting England just as the man of 
German blood, who is not with us, is against fight- 
ing Germany, and of a piece with the Irishman whose 
hatred of England is greater than his love for 
America. 

" To be sure, only a part of these people are on the 
wrong course. They are trying to mislead the rest. 



I50 TALKS WITH T. R. 

Some are honest, but misguided. Some are palpably 
dishonest. The effect is the same in each instance. 
It must be our job to curb them, and in the future 
so conduct ourselves toward the immigrant that 
others of their kind that may arise later will have less 
fertile fields to work in." 

Shortly after " Children of the Crucible" appeared. 
The first name appended to it was that of Theodore 
Roosevelt. 



ROOSEVELT ON LABOR 

COLONEL ROOSEVELT'S position on labor 
was peculiar in that in some respects he was 
more radical than Samuel Gompers. Like Gompers 
he had no use for a "Labor Party" as such, and to 
the extent that he favored old age and health insur- 
ance he went farther than Mr. Gompers had ever 
done. To the extent that he believed labor would 
get the best results by working with the existing 
parties, he and Gompers were agreed. 

"The difficulty with the Labor- Party idea," he 
declared, "is that it is based upon a false premise. 
It is based on the theory that the interests of so- 
called labor are different from the interests of the 
community as a whole. That is a foolish doctrine, 
just as foolish as it would be to try and maintain 
that the interests of the manufacturer or other 
employer are different from those of the rest of the 
community. It is entirely a selfish and wicked doc- 
trine, and, if successful, would work hardships on 
labor more than on any other group in the com- 
munity." 

Colonel Roosevelt made this observation while 
he was "mulling over" a speech on after- the-war 
preparedness he proposed to deliver in Bridgeport 



152 TALKS WITH T. R. 

at a "bye" Congressional election in the fall of 191 7. 
The death of Ebenezer J. Hill, long in Congress from 
that district, a likable old "stand-patter," had left a 
vacancy for which the Republicans had nominated 
Schuyler Merritt, a banker and manufacturer of 
Stamford. The Colonel was asked to speak there and 
he accepted, with the idea that the speech might be 
the "keynote" or a "keynote" for the Congressional 
elections a year later. 

"We have got to get ready for after the war," he 
told me. "We might as well begin now. I am going 
to speak up there on industrial preparedness as much 
as anything else. I may shock some persons up there, 
but we might just as well recognize now as at some 
later time that something must be done for labor. 

"There are a great many business men who seem 
to be of the opinion that once peace arrives, pre-war 
conditions will return overnight as it were. These 
are as short-sighted as the labor radicals who are 
declaring that abnormal wages, to be expected in 
time of war, will have to prevail when peace comes. 
Both are wrong, and are paving the way for some 
very serious misunderstandings. The employers 
must be fair and reasonable; the reactionary em- 
ployer is no better than the extreme radical among 
the union men." 

"The shrewdest of the labor men," I told him. 



ROOSEVELT ON LABOR 153 

"are now preparing against that sort of thing. For 
example, William H. Johnson, head of the machin- 
ists, one of the ablest of them, whose trade has prob- 
ably been affected more than any other by the war, 
is privately bending every effort to get his organi- 
zation into as good shape as possible for the recon- 
struction period." 

"Johnson is right. He has keener foresight than 
a lot of employers. 

"There are going to be disturbances, but these 
will be minimized if we can get what is commonly 
called labor and what is commonly called capital 
together in a realizing sense that their interests are 
identical, and that the problems of one are the prob- 
lems of all. The employer has no more right to hog 
all the profits than the union has a right to insist 
upon wages that will permit of no profits. Unless the 
business man does well, the laborer won't, because 
there won't be labor for the laborer to do. 

"Sooner or later we have got to come to some sys- 
tem of old-age pensions, proper protection against 
accident and disease, more particularly the occupa- 
tional disease, and we have got to insure good living 
conditions. So far as these are arranged by common 
consent of both sides and the community, well and 
good. Where they cannot be thus arranged, the 
State will have to do it. This will not appeal to some 



154 TALKS WITH T. R. 

of our friends among the so-called employing classes, 
but we may as well face the facts squarely 

"Unless all history is valueless as a guide, we are 
going, sooner or later, to have to pay for the enor- 
mous destructions of capital in this war. We cannot 
hope to evade some period of depression. How severe 
that will be depends largely upon ourselves. We can- 
not avoid it, but we can make it less severe than it 
otherwise might be. In this labor and capital must 
work together — must realize that their problems 
are alike, and that unless the employer is prosper- 
ous, the employee cannot be. Equally so, unless the 
employee is treated fairly, the employer and the 
community cannot be prosperous. The partners in 
the enterprise must realize their responsibilities to 
each other and act accordingly." 

Developing this thought. Colonel Roosevelt went 
to Bridgeport where the local reporters were mysti- 
fied by his failure to say very much about the candi- 
date. Some tried to read into this lack of interest in 
Merritt. A few of the New York papers spoke of it 
as a "national speech," or as "the opening gun in 
the 1918 campaign." 

"That," he said, "is reasonably accurate." 
Later, when the speech was taken up in discussion, 
I said my talks with labor men had shown it was 
rather favorably received, at the same time ex- 



ROOSEVELT ON LABOR 155 

pressing doubt as to how some employers, largely in 
Merritt's district (he being elected meantime) would 
like it on mature thought. 

"Well," he said, "Gompers will not quarrel with 
anything I said there, and the others cannot. Most 
men not directly interested will approve of all I said. 

"Here is the speech sent out. Except for what I 
said about Merritt in opening, I followed this closely 
as you know. Who can quarrel with this or deny my 
accuracy? 'The conditions [of business] must be such 
that the business man prospers or else nobody will 
prosper; and yet, unless the prosperity is in a reason- 
able degree shared by the men who work with him 
and by the public for which he works, it is of little 
or no worth to the community. In other words, we 
must insist upon business prosperity, because other- 
wise there will be no prosperity at all, and we must 
insist upon reasonable equity in passing the pros- 
perity around, or it will not be worth having. 

" 'The demagogue who inveighs against and seeks 
to interfere with business prosperity is really the same 
kind of an enemy to the common weal as his nominal 
foe, the reactionary, who refuses to acknowledge the 
duty of the Government to see that there is measur- 
able equity in the distribution of the fruits of this 
prosperity. Our aim must be not to damage success- 
ful business, but to insure good conduct in business. 



156 TALKS WITH T. R. 

"'We wish to secure as a matter of right for the 
worker among other things permanency of employ- 
ment, pensions that will permit the worker to look 
forward to old age with dignity aiid security; insur- 
ance against accident and disease, proper working 
and living conditions, reasonable leisure, and as high 
wages as are compatible with giving to capital the 
return necessary to induce it to invest and giving the 
public proper service. 

*" So far as these needs can be obtained by private 
agreement, well and good; it is preferable that they 
should, where possible, come in this manner; for the 
most important thing is to secure a mental attitude 
that will secure a hearty recognition by all engaged 
in a business that each must treat all the others as 
partners, that all should render the very best service 
of which each is capable and that both the obliga- 
tion and the reward shall be mutual. 

'"In addition to this good- will, there must be the 
sanction of law. The State must require and guar- 
antee the well-being of the workers as the essential 
part of its policy in promoting the welfare of the 
business. What the individual can do by himself or 
in connection with others should be left to him or 
them; the State should deal with what cannot thus 
be left to private individuals. 

"'But the welfare of the workers cannot be ob- 



ROOSEVELT ON LABOR 157 

tained unless the welfare of the business is assured 
and the Government should work steadily toward 
that end. The demagogic effort to break up or de- 
stroy a business, merely because it is big or because 
it is prosperous, is mischievous from every stand- 
point. The aim should be to encourage business and 
control it, to secure cooperation among all engaged 
in business so far as is possible, and to supervise 
large-scale business so as to insure its good behavior, 
but not to penalize it while it renders proper serv- 
ice.' 

''Do you see anything to quarrel with in that?" 
he demanded. 

I explained that I did not, but added that he went 
farther in some respects than Mr. Gompers had, 
notably in the matter of old-age insurance or pen- 
sions. 

"I understand that the unions are not in agree- 
ment on the desirability of this," he said, " but I am 
inclined to think they will come to it eventually. 
It is, perhaps, as well that they make haste slowly 
in this respect. As I understand it, their position is 
that it will interfere with their progress in other 
ways. 

"I have heard since I saw you last that some of 
Mr. Merritt's friends regret that I brought labor into 
this thing. I do not. I told one man who spoke of this 



158 TALKS WITH T. R. 

that I am not at all concerned in pleasing everybody. 
That is something I have never tried to do. I do not 
propose to do it now. I am too old to make that 
change. 

"The greatest liberty in doing all these things I 
have advocated should, within due limits, having 
regard for all interests, be left to the employer and 
employee. There is a limit, however. 

"One of the greatest dangers I can imagine, how- 
ever, is a combination, an agreement of short- 
sighted employers and unscrupulous union leaders, 
to fleece the public between them. This is possible 
in highly organized trades. In such an event both 
sides should be punished with the greatest severity. 
"I have always been for labor within reason and 
the law. I have had many friends since my days in 
the Assembly among the cigarmakers. I have always 
been for healthy working conditions, just as when 
I was Police Commissioner I believed the unions 
should be allowed to picket, so long as they did not 
use their fists or clubs to pound home their argu- 
ments. Where they tried that I was for locking them 
up. That was fair play and a sane way of looking at 
the matter. That is all I advocate now." 

I raised a question as to what he meant by per- 
manency of employment — if by that he meant a 
worker should have a vested interest in his position. 



ROOSEVELT ON LABOR 159 

Before he could answer, the Chinese gong hanging 
in the hallway sounded the signal for him to prepare 
for dinner. 

"No," said he rising, "not exactly that. I will take 
the matter up with you some other time. There is 
too much of that to dispose of it in a minute. But we 
can say this: a good deal of consideration should be 
given before any old employee, whether he be super- 
intendent or day laborer, is thrown out of employ- 
ment." 

This phase of his labor programme, I regret to 
state, we never took up again. 



"ONE PURPLE NIGHT" 

THIS was Colonel Roosevelt's description of a 
party he gave at a Westchester roadhouse 
early one Sunday morning in the fall of 191 7. The 
Colonel's guests were a half -score of Bridgeport, 
Connecticut, policemen and some New York news- 
paper men; the party followed a speech by the 
Colonel in Bridgeport. 

The night train service from Bridgeport to New 
York is not attractive, and whenever the Colonel 
spoke there he would return to New York by motor, 
guarded by police. First, however, there would be a 
little supper at the Stratfield, where a few of the local 
leaders would meet the Colonel. 

On the night in question the supper had been dis- 
posed of, and the start was about to be made for 
New York, when the Colonel asked if the men who 
were to accompany him were those who had been 
with him during the day. John King said they 
were. 

"That must not be," said the Colonel. "These 
men have been on duty all day. It will be all hours 
before they can get back. Send them home. We'll 
get back all right without them." 

"Nothing doing," replied King. "The men will 



ONE PURPLE NIGHT i6i 

insist on going. They can sleep to-morrow. It's their 
day off." 

"Very well, then," said the Colonel. "Of course it 
will be all right for me to give them a little money 
for breakfast." 

"No, sir," said King; "you must not give it, and 
they must not take it. That would never do." 

"Well," said the Colonel, "it will be all right for 
me to take them to breakfast with me?" 

"That cannot be done," I suggested. 

"So," concluded the Colonel, "between you and 
King I seem unable to do anything. Now, why carit 
I take them to breakfast?" 

"Because Mayor Mitchel closed everything except 
'one-arm' lunch-rooms at one o'clock." 

"By Jove, there is an advantage to a Broadway 
education, is n't there? It's so long since I've been 
uptown late I had quite overlooked that change. But 
is n't there some good place between here and New 
York?" 

There were several. Mr. King recommended the 
Post Road Inn in New Rochelle, and it was decided 
to stop there. 

It was two in the morning when we reached the 
place in three automobiles — the policemen in full 
uniform, the Colonel, the late N. A. Jennings of the 
New York Herald, A. Leonard Smith of the New York 



i62 TALKS WITH T. R. 

Times, and myself. It was the practice, I should state, 
to use three cars, a pilot car loaded with police, the 
Colonel's car with two policemen on the box, and a 
trailer carrying four more. Regardless of speed laws, 
the party usually made fast time. 

As the crowd unloaded at the Inn, the proprietor, 
naturally swarthy, looked out and turned pale. 
Alarm, fear of a raid, and arrest were written on 
every feature. Before he could say or do anything I 
assured him. 

"Don't be scared," I said, as I led the police in; 
"it's not a raid ^ only some folks after something 
to eat." 

With a sigh of relief he asked, "How many?" 
and started to arrange the table. Halfway to the 
dining-room he espied the Colonel and retraced his 

steps. 

"Beg pardon," said he, "but is n't that El Presi- 
dente, President Roosevelt?" 

"It is Colonel Roosevelt, all right," I said. And 
again he started for the dining-room, this time regis- 
tering something like a cross between surprise and 
elation. A moment later the band suddenly switched 
from rag- time to the national anthem, and before the 
surprised dancers had a chance to adjust their steps 
the Colonel at the head of the party was halfway 
across the room. 



ONE PURPLE NIGHT 163 

Instantly the dancers broke into applause, the 
few who had been seated rising to cheer. Then, in a 
confused sort of way, as though doubtful of what to 
do next, all hands took their seats and watched the 
Colonel's party. 

The dance-hall crowd, it may be stated, was just 
such a crowd as one would expect in a country road- 
house at an early hour Sunday morning — men of 
the "tired business" or salesman type; girls young, 
a bit inclined to be flashy, but not conspicuously so 
— something between the "flapper" and the chorus- 
girl type. Probably all had worked hard during 
the week and were having their weekly "blow- 
out." 

After some discussion of the bill-of-fare, lobster 
was ordered — that and champagne, the latter by 
Colonel Roosevelt without any suggestion from 
others in the group. During the meal most of the 
talking was done by Colonel Roosevelt, among it 
some on John L. Sullivan, who had been in Bridge- 
port the preceding day. He also discussed some of his 
Spanish War experiences. These latter followed an 
interruption by a man wearing the Maltese cross of 
the Spanish War veteran. 

"No apology needed," the Colonel assured this 
man when he apologized for "butting in." "I am 
always glad to meet any of my old comrades in arms. 



i64 TALKS WITH T. R. 

We did not have much of a war, but it was the best 
to be had, and we did the best we could." 

" A lot of the old boys have gone from around here, 
Colonel," said the veteran in a tone suggesting re- 
gret that he, too, could not go. 

"I know it, and I am proud of them for having 
gone," answered the Colonel. "If I had been per- 
mitted to go, to take my division across, I 'd have 
had whole camps with me. The boys are right." 

"The boys are all strong for you, Colonel; they 
were all rooting for you to get a chance. They knew 
you'd make good." 

"And they would have made good, they will make 
good, those of them that are permitted to go, and 
their sons will make good. They're the make-good 
kind." 

Others, emboldened by the fact that the Spanish 
War vet had not been rebuffed, then came up to pay 
their respects. When the last had gone, some one 
remarked that the "ex-soldier was feeling pretty 
good." 

"Yes," said the Colonel, "I noticed that. I have 
noticed before this that all Spanish War veterans 
are not teetotallers. In fact, I have known some of 
my own men to get rather drunk, to put it mildly — 
but they were all good fellows, just the same. 

" I remember on one of my trips West, one of my 



ONE PURPLE NIGHT 165 

old men rode many miles to see me. He 'd told every- 
body what he was going to say and what a good time 
he'd have when he saw me. When I arrived, how- 
ever, I think he can best be described as having been 
too full for utterance. The boys had had to tie him 
up and lay him away to recuperate. It was his first 
lapse, I was told, in several years. Of course I did n't 
see him. 

"Later on I had a letter from him full of contrition, 
apologies, and regrets, and a rather naive explana- 
tion. If he could n't celebrate when he was to see his 
old Colonel, when could he celebrate? However, he 
added, he was back on the water-wagon. Recently I 
heard he was still on it. I hope he stays there for life, 
for he is a good fellow and that's his one weakness." 

The curious may wish to know if the Colonel drank 
anything that morning. 

He did — part of a glass of wine. 



DEVIL-FISHING 

GOOD sport, but not exactly the thing to recom- 
mend to a weakling, or one at all nervous of a 
little danger," was Colonel Roosevelt's opinion of 
devil-fishing. He had one try at this, in the spring of 
191 7, when the declaration of war against Germany 
made it seem advisable to call off a visit to the West 
Indies for which he had made all of his plans. 

He thought so well of the sport that just before he 
died he wrote his friend, Russell J. Coles, of Dan- 
ville, Virginia, accepting an invitation to join him in 
an expedition on March i, and thanking him for 
having included Captain Archie, then practically 
recovered from his wounds, in the invitation. 

"The devil fish," said the Colonel describing the 
sport in his library at Oyste'r Bay, "is the big game 
of the sea. There is nothing else quite like it that I 
know of, though I doubt if it will ever become a very 
popular sport. It is good sport, but not exactly the 
kind to recommend to a weakling, or one at all nerv- 
ous of a little danger. I do not know that careful 
physicians will agree in recommending it to gentle- 
men of advanced years, for, as you may imagine, it 
is hard work. 

"I became interested in devil-fishing through 



DEVIL-FISHING 167 

Russell Coles, of Danville, Virginia. Coles is rather 
an extraordinary sort of person, the unusual com- 
bination of good business man and high-class scien- 
tist. Most of his year he devotes to his tobacco busi- 
ness in Virginia. The rest of it he puts in hunting 
devil fish and sharks, and by way of diversion at odd 
moments writes scientific articles, or prepares papers 
to be read before scientific societies. He takes a very 
practical interest in public affairs, and is in every 
sense of the word a mighty fine citizen, 

"I became interested in him through something 
he did for the American Museum of Natural History. 
That was some years ago. Since then I have had 
much correspondence with him, and when I found 
that I could not go South as I had arranged, I de- 
cided to accept one of his many invitations to go 
fishing. His proposal was that I should spend a 
month. We compromised on about a week. 

"In devil-fishing you camp in a house built on a 
scow that is anchored off a Florida key. Your fishing 
you do from a launch. Coles, who is a whale of a man 
himself, has a crew that is as good as he is. His cap- 
tain, Charley Willis, is a powerful, two-handed sort 
of a man who has been with him many years. An- 
other of his outfit Is Captain Jack McCann. He's 
unusual, too, a good seaman and a naturalist, who 
habitually describes plants by their scientific names. 



1 68 TALKS WITH T. R. 

The others of his crew — he usually has four men — 
are of the same high type of intelligence. 

"It is some considerable journey to the 'camp.' 
There you get up at sunrise, get into rough clothes, 
and after you 've made sure that the gear is all right, 
make off in a launch for the fishing grounds. The 
weapons used are harpoons, which the real fishermen 
call 'irons,' just as I have heard some whalers call 
their weapons, and a lance. Sometimes the old- 
fashioned whaling lance is used. Coles has had some 
made on designs of his own. New Bedford, by the 
way, is the best place to get these things if you ever 
wish them. 

"The iron is a business-like weapon. It has a head 
of the finest tempered steel, on a shaft of soft iron. 
There is one there, minus the wooden handle. When 
you see the way that is bent, you will see why it is 
necessary to make the shaft of comparatively soft 
metal." 

The instrument, somewhat rusted, was bent to an 
angle of almost forty-five degrees and occupied a 
place of honor on the mantel on which rested the 
bronze presented to him by the famous "tennis 
cabinet." 

"That's one I used on the big fish I got with 
Coles's assistance. You see it is so built that once in, 
the struggles of the beast release the barb and usu- 



DEVIL-FISHING 169 

ally, though not always, prevents your prey escap- 
ing. The iron is attached to a rope which is either 
run out of the boat or made fast to what they call a 
drogue — a sort of sea anchor, or drag. This is a 
powerful brake, but one of these creatures will pull 
a heavy launch almost unbelievable distances with 
one of these drogues fastened to it with another 
harpoon. 

"I mivSsed my first fish through inexperience in 
gauging the speed at which it was moving. The 
second one, I got square in the middle of the body. 
When we came to take my iron out we found I had 
driven it through bone, muscle, and hide more than 
two feet — two feet four inches to be exact — and 
the thing had gone through the beast's heart. After 
I got my iron into it, Coles also put one in. With 
these two in its body, the thing dragged the boat a 
full half-mile before it became exhausted enough for 
us to get it alongside. Then it was necessary to use 
the lance on it twice. 

" I should say that before I went to Florida, Coles 
had coached me a great deal — so that I knew how I 
was expected to handle myself, where to aim for 
with the harpoon, and how to use the lance. He 
drilled and drilled me so that while it was my first 
* appearance on any stage ' as a devil-fisher, I was by 
no means ignorant of the art. 



lyo TALKS WITH T. R. 

"On the second fish we struck, Coles's iron pulled 
out. He got it a second time. This one towed us two 
miles. 

"One of our specimens when we came to measure 
it proved to be the second largest of which there is 
any record of being killed. Coles has the record fish. 

"We did not have such good luck on the second 
day, the one fish we struck being lost. In this respect 
it is like every other kind of sport; you must figure 
on having good luck and bad, and on days when you 
will get nothing as well as the rare days when you 
will get a big bag." 

"You call this fish the 'big game of the sea.' How 
does killing it compare with 'big-game' killing 
ashore," I asked. 

"It is difficult of comparison because all of the 
circumstances are so different. Both are good, but I 
think I prefer the land game. I am too much of a 
landlubber not to have a preference for solid earth 
under my feet. But it is great sport, and I am going 
back when I have more time to spare, just as I hope 
to get another chance at lions in Africa. I have no 
desire for the bigger game, elephants and that sort of 
thing, but I would like a few more lions. 

"Like all big-game hunting, in devil-fishing you 
have to depend very much on your guides and you 
must expect some considerable danger of being hurt. 



DEVIL-FISHING 171 

The fish will not attack any one, but when attacked 
they will fight back. At the risk of being called a 
nature fakir I '11 add that the male of the species has 
been known to attack a boat which had made fast 
to a female. At least, that is what veterans at the 
sport tell. Like everything else of this sort, this is 
something one would like to verify. However, Coles, 
who like most scientists is sceptical of many things, 
is inclined to credit these stories. 

"Coles, by the way, got into this thing in a rather 
unusual way. He had the groundwork of a good edu- 
cation when he went into devil-fishing and shark- 
hunting because he had become wearied of other 
fishing. The scientific side of the thing appealed to 
him, and when he began to look things up, he found 
that very little work had been done. Now he is prob- 
ably the world's best authority in this line. He has 
also gone to the point where he has made shark- 
fishing attractive from a commercial standpoint. 
He has no interest in the commercial side of the 
thing — he has passed that up to others after spend- 
ing quite a lot of money in pioneer work. That, of 
course, is the scientist of it." 

Colonel Roosevelt's last college degree — that of 
Doctor of Science — was awarded him by Trinity 
College, at the same time Coles received a similar 
honor. To be invested in the degree they journeyed 



172 TALKS WITH T. R. 

together to Hartford. On their return, the Colonel 
said he had had a "bully" time. 

"Jack Morgan was there to get a degree, too," he 
said, "and he was very much interested in Coles. 
Coles invited him to go fishing. It would not surprise 
me if he went, for Morgan, you know, is a husky 
chap who knows a thing or two on handling a boat 
himself — much more than I do." 



A VARIED READING DIET 

IN his travels Colonel Roosevelt's reading was 
catholic in scope. It ranged from a volume of 
"Plutarch's Lives," he may have taken from his 
library, a bulletin of some learned society picked up 
from a desk as he was about to leave home, or a 
popular magazine filled with detective stories or 
tales of adventure. 

"I wish," he would say as we were arriving in a 
town, '' that you would try and get me a copy of the 
Red Book ; there 's a detective story in that I want 
to finish"; or, "see if you cannot pick up a copy of 
Adventure. I am somewhat of an adventurer myself 
and want to know what the rest of the tribe may be 
interested in just now." 

Once I remarked that this was "rather low-brow 
diet." 

"True," he said, "but why feed entirely on the 
heavier stuff? I get all the 'high-brow' magazines at 
home. Lord! I don't read one half of them. This low- 
brow stuff, as you call it, is good for a change. I like 
a good detective story when I can get it. These 
things may not be literature, but they interest and 
rest me. They make up the salads of my reading. 

"You remember old Senator Hoar from your 



174 TALKS WITH T. R. 

State? Do you remember that he was addicted to 
dime novels? That used to be a shock to some very 
good people who imagined the Senator lived on the 
Transcript and the Congressional Record when he 
was not devouring law books and even heavier 
things. Some saw in this evidence of total depravity 
on the old man's part — an evil example to the 
young. It was merely his way of relaxing and resting 
up between times. 

" I was very fond of Hoar, though I did not know 
him as well as I would have liked to. I have often 
laughed at that mot of his on 'Ben' Butler's funeral. 
You remember some one asked the Senator if he 
were going to attend it. 

"'No,' he is said to have replied, 'but I approve 
of it.'" 



"TRYING TO KILL ME" 

IT sometimes seems that some of my admiring 
friends wish to work me to death. The idea of 
most committees seems to be to pass me on to the 
next place as neariy dead as possible." 

Most considerate of the comfort of others, Colonel 
Roosevelt at times complained of the lack of con- 
sideration for him. 

"It is queer," he said on another occasion, this 
time when he was reported recovered from a serious 
illness, "that people should hail my discharge from 
the hospital as the signal to pile invitations to work 
on me. Really it seems as though one half of the let- 
ters congratulating me on my recovery conclude 
with an invitation to speak here, there, anywhere. 
There are hundreds of them." 

Returning from his last extensive tour of the 
West, the Colonel spoke of this demand of speeches 
from him. He had been ill on this trip, and as we 
neared New York, I ventured to advise that he 
spend the summer quietly at Oyster Bay. 

"I hope," I said, "that if I may say so, this ex- 
perience has taught you something. It is a result of 
your not following Dr. James's orders and taking a 
rest. It is a warning. You must take things easy." 



176 TALKS WITH T. R. 

"I shall do that; I shall have to do that. But I 
shall have to do some things." 

"Colonel, you simply will have to rest. There are 
two hot months ahead, there's good boating and 
fishing at Oyster Bay, you have n't cut your winter's 
wood yet. I am presuming, I know, but you must 
rest, for there's hard work ahead and you will be 
needed. In saying this I do not mean to be offensive." 

"You are not; you are perfectly right, and I shall 
take things easier. You simply say what all my real 
friends say. But I must go to Passaic July 4. I must 
do that." 

"You should not accept any more invitations. 
It is asking too much." 

" I know it is. The usual committee idea is to pass 
me along to the next town as nearly dead as possible, 
always taking pains to see that I do not die on their 
hands." 

"And don't yield to any 'just one speech ' appeal." 

"I won't. You are saying what those who really 
have my interest at heart say. The others say to me, 
'Save yourself,' and then ask me to come out and 
speak for them. Jim Goodrich wants me to return 
to Indiana for another speech. I'll see him in hell 
first." 



LOYALTY 

THE longer I live the more I am inclined to 
think of clan loyalty. I am afraid of those 
superior persons who are so good they can long stand 
by nobody, not even themselves." 

Colonel Roosevelt had in mind some members of 
the old Progressive party who did not fully approve 
of his war attitude. These were the more respectable 
of what he had been known to call the "lunatic 
fringe." 

"The spirit of the clan," he went on, "is what we 
as Americans lack. We need one big American clan, 
with its members always for the clan. I must confess 
that I have never been able to get the viewpoint of 
those very excellent persons who object to the old 
navy toast: 'My country right, my country wrong; 
but right or wrong, my country.* There are other 
versions, and I may not have it exact, but that is the 
thought. 

" I suppose it is another manifestation of my gen- 
eral bloodthirsty, swashbuckling frame of mind, my 
fondness for the big stick and violence of all kinds. 
I know it is most reprehensible for me to talk to a 
youth of your tender years — you are n't much over 
forty, are you? — and I should know better, but I 



lyS TALKS WITH T. R. 

don't. I cannot bring myself to that point where I 
can disagree with that sentiment. 

"I want my country to be right; I hope she al- 
ways will be right; but right or wrong, whatever she 
gets into I am going to be with her until she gets 
out. Then if there is any correcting to do, I '11 try 
and do my share. And I am not prepared to concede 
the possibility of error in that doctrine by agreeing 
to debate it with anybody. 

" It is said to be bad ethics, just as it is said to be 
bad ethics to teach a boy to defend himself, or his 
baby brother or his sister or his mother. Some good 
people hold that a boy who gets into a fight, whether 
he be right or wrong, should be punished. I do not. 
If one of my boys was a bully, I 'd try to thrash it 
out of him. If he would not defend himself against a 
bully, I 'd thrash him until I had some degree of man- 
hood in him. He'd require but one thrashing. 

**The clan, of course, is one of the oldest forms of 
organization — it is a crude manifestation of the 
organizing spirit. At bottom there is no real differ- 
ence between the spirit that makes possible great 
corporations and that responsible for our New York 
gangs. It is the clan spirit — the organizing spirit. 
The difference is that in one instance the organizing 
spirit is developed along good lines, is used in a 
proper direction, and in the other it is not. Organi- 



LOYALTY 179 

zation per se is bad only when it is used for bad 
ends. 

"The New York street gang is but a form of clan. 
The gang leader comes to the top because of the same 
general qualities that makes another, born into hap- 
pier surroundings, a society leader. Both have to 
fight their way up through. I do not like gangs, and 
I do not admire gang leaders, but this much is to be 
said for them — they do stand for something and 
you know where they stand. They have in them the 
essence of loyalty." 



GERMANS IN AMERICA 

THERE is nothing in sound Americanism that 
will not be endorsed by the preponderating 
majority of the men and women of German blood 
in America." 

This sentiment Colonel Roosevelt expressed again 
and again to all who would listen to him before, dur- 
ing, and after hostilities. He was most emphatic in 
declaring it after leaving Milwaukee, and again on 
leaving St. Louis. 

After a meeting in Toledo, largely made up of 
Germans, he declared they resented only "pseudo- 
Americanism." 

"It is," said he, "only the pseudo- Americanism 
of Wilson that they object to." 

With this declaration went a call for fair play for 
the Germans in this country and he went out of his 
way to practice what he preached. 

A notable example of this was in St. Louis, which 
in addition to a large German population also has a 
Mayor of German blood — Henry Kiel. 

When the Colonel paid his last visit to St. Louis, 
he was very sick with erysipelas. He was insistent 
on keeping the dates made for him by the National 
Security League, and, by following his physician's 



GERMANS IN AMERICA i8i 

orders to get all possible rest, managed to do so. In 
St. Louis, however, conditions made it necessary 
that he take a hand in arranging the details of his 
meeting, lest injustice be done somebody and a bad 
matter made worse. 

This condition, partly political and partly hys- 
terical, arose from the fact that the local committee 
was not in sympathy with Mayor Kiel, who, accord- 
ing to some of its members, was pro-German. For 
this reason Kiel had been overlooked to a large 
extent in making the arrangements for the Colonel's 
reception and meeting. To this meeting the Colonel 
insisted upon being introduced by the Mayor. The 
active members of the committee did not wish any- 
thing of the sort, the Mayor was not on hand to 
speak for himself, and there was no one to speak for 
him. 

In this muddle the Colonel insisted that courtesy 
and fair play demanded that Kiel be given an oppor- 
tunity to decline to take part in the meeting, and 
that every other consideration supported this de- 
mand. If the Mayor declined, it would, he said, be 
another story. 

"Then I'll hang his hide on the barn door," he 
declared to me; ''but I'll not attack him nor any 
other man until I am sure of my grounds for 
attacking." 



1 82 TALKS WITH T. R. 

After much backing and filling, Judge Dyer, 
whom the Colonel, as President, had placed on the 
Federal Bench, called to leave a card. 

"I understand the Colonel is not well, so I won't 
ask to disturb him," he said. 

I asked him to wait until I could learn the Colo- 
nel's wishes in the matter. 

"By all means," he exclaimed. "He is the one man 
in St. Louis I do want to see." 

"The Judge," he told me after the visit, "says 
Kiel is all right. He knows. I 'd rather have that old 
hardshell's opinion than that of any other man here. 
These young men on this committee are nice boys, 
but they don't know. If they were residents of New 
York, they would be members of the Citizens' Union, 
and strong for reform, but they would not know the 
names of their Assemblymen." 

It was, however, not easy to locate Mr. Kiel; he 
was not, in fact, located until the Colonel reached 
the barnlike Auditorium where the meeting was to 
be held. Just before we left for the hall, I asked what 
would be done about Kiel. 

"We will do nothing until we find whether or not 
the Mayor shows up," he said. " If he does, all right. 
If he does n't, well, I '11 preside myself if I have to." 

Mayor Kiel was, however, waiting at the hall, a 
bit nervous, but glad to do the honors. His brief. 



GERMANS IN AMERICA 183 

clean-cut speech was satisfactory even to the 
Colonel, who was mightily pleased with the way the 
matter turned out. 

"Don't you see," he asked, on the way back to 
the hotel, " that it was far better to do as we did do? 
Had we proceeded on the theory that Kiel was all 
he was said to be, an injustice would be done to the 
man, the cause for which we all stand would be in- 
jured, and we should have gone far toward setting 
up such another situation as exists in Chicago. Kiel 
is not another Mayor Thompson; he is entirely of 
another type, and he is making the best of a condi- 
tion that at times must be very difficult for him. 

" It is always best to be fair in the extreme in such 
matters; best to go slow until you have all the facts. 
Then if the man is wrong hit him, and hit him hard ; 
show him no mercy. Had Kiel justified what they 
had said about him and not taken part in that 
meeting, I 'd have pilloried him. I 'm glad I did not 
have to. 

"Just think how it would have heartened the 
enemy abroad and the enemy at home if it had gone 
broadcast: 'Roosevelt denounces St. Louis Mayor 
as Pro-German'; or, 'St. Louis Mayor refuses to 
speak at Loyalty Meeting.' 

"Did you notice how well the crowd took what I 
had to say about Germany and straight American- 



1 84 TALKS WITH T. R. 

ism? That audience was very largely German — it 
was full of German types — but they all seemed to 
like it. There was one chap there — I wonder if you 
noticed him, he sat well down front and looked like 
the German bandsman the funny papers print — he 
enjoyed it every minute. If I had time and it were 
possible I 'd like to meet that old fellow and talk with 
him. Without knowing a thing about him, I '11 wager 
that he is one of those Germans who left Germany 
to escape the ' Kultur ' we are now fighting to escape." 

" I watched Kiel closely during your speech," I 
said, "and he seemed as well pleased as your German 
down front did." 

" Probably, though he is in rather a different posi- 
tion. But the old Judge was all right. Depend upon 
men of his type. He's an old hardshell Republican, 
on the bench and out of politics, but he knows more 
than all the nice boys on the committee ever will. 
Steve Connell, whom you met to-day, is another 
shrewd fellow. He was with me when I was in the 
White House — secret service, you know. He's a 
fine fellow and I 'm glad to have you meet him.You '11 
find him dependable and straightforward." 

This visit to St. Louis was part of an "invasion of 
the enemy's country," including Milwaukee, and 
Springfield, Ohio, the latter the seat of Wittenberg 
College, one of the oldest Lutheran institutions in 



4 



GERMANS IN AMERICA 185 

the country, and Madison, Wisconsin, seat of the 
State University, which Dr. Robert M. McElroy, of 
Princeton, had reported, after rather an unpleasant 
experience, "was not one hundred per cent loyal." 
Proceeding to these places, the Colonel declared it 
to be his intention to "give them all that is in me." 

"In Milwaukee," said he, " I shall give them every- 
thing I have said anywhere else and, if I can think 
of it, something more. Being in what Bryan might 
call the 'enemy's country' will make no difference 
with me. I do not anticipate any bother, but if there 
is any, we shall have to make the best of it." 

Anticipating "bother," secret service men de- 
tailed by the management of the St. Paul road, the 
Colonel's ever-faithful colored valet, James Amos, 
to whom his last words, "Please turn off the light," 
were spoken, and I grouped ourselves about him as 
he left the train. He broke away from the group to 
greet a white-whiskered old man who walked with 
a cane. "General," he exclaimed, "this is almighty 
good of you to come and see me ! I wanted to have a 
talk with you. I was going to call at your home. 
May I call there or will I see you at the hotel? Which 
is the more convenient to you?" 

"I am surprised you remember me," said the old 
man. "It is many years since you have seen me. 
I will see you at the hotel." 



1 86 TALKS WITH T. R. 

"Come right up now. Yes, indeed, come right up 
with me. I am glad to see you and you must come to 
the meeting. I want you on the platform." 

The old man, the Colonel introduced as General 
Mueller. 

"He lost a leg in the Union Army," he told me at 
the hotel. "He's the kind of man that has saved the 
mass of Germans in this country from the infamy 
some of their number would put upon all : men like 
him and Adolph Vogel whom you just met. The 
General tells me that his grandsons are all in the 
army and all but one of Vogel's boys are there too. 
That one goes next month. 

"Vogel tells me they have the largest hall in town 
and that it 's already packed with Germans. He has 
no doubt as to my reception. Neither have I. But I 
am going to talk straight at them." 

He did. Among the new notes struck was a hard 
drive on the teaching of German in grade schools. 
To my surprise this was the "hit" of the speech. 
I mentioned this surprise to the Colonel. 

"That has been a big issue here," he said. 

After the meeting a young man, evidently a grad- 
uate of some German university to judge by the 
duelling scars on his cheeks, told me the Colonel's 
talk was "the sort needed." 

"What the Germans here have had, in private 



GERMANS IN AMERICA 187 

talk at least, has been abuse," he said. "Loyal men 
have been abused as much as those openly disloyal. 
This has tended to increase disloyalt^^ The Colonel's 
talk will weaken the Bergers and strengthen men 
like Vogel. Milwaukee is all right." 

"The young man is not entirely accurate," the 
Colonel commented when I repeated his remarks. 
"He is quite correct on the matter of abuse. But he 
is wrong in saying that Milwaukee is all right. There 
is a big element here that is all wrong. Milwaukee 
to-day may be sixty per cent all right, fifteen per 
cent in the shadow zone, and twenty-five per cent 
dead wrong. It cannot be all right with a Socialist 
Mayor, a Socialist Chief of Police, and a Socialist 
Sheriff. Remember, the Socialist Party which elected 
these men is not an American institution." 

Springfield, Ohio, Hke Milwaukee, is largely popu- 
lated by persons of German birth or blood. In addi- 
tion to Wittenberg College, which, in the commonly 
used term, is a German school, it had thirteen 
churches in which German was the only language 
used and four where both German and English pre- 
vailed. The school had suffered because of its sup- 
posed German leanings, and Springfield as a whole 
was not pleased with the reputation that it was in- 
clined to be pro-German. 

Dr. Hecker, an aggressive type of college presi- 



1 88 TALKS WITH T. R. 

dent, more the able administrator than the great 
teacher, was very anxious to overcome the feehng 
that had been aroused, and as one way to accom- 
pHsh the desired result invited the Colonel to address 
the school. Other interests joined in the invitation. 

"I have," said the Colonel, speaking of his deci- 
sion to accept, "no delusions as to Dr. Hecker's self- 
interest in inviting me to address the school. It is 
natural and proper on his part. But I won't toe 
down one bit. 

"It is just the sort of place I want to speak, but 
I am not going to temper my remarks to please any- 
body. Of course they say there is no pro-Germanism 
in that country and that they are poor, much- 
abused, little woolly lambs. That fools nobody. They 
are now tr>ung to run straight. Very well. I will help 
them by giving them the cleanest-cut Americanism 
that is in me. They have agreed to this and they 
will get it. 

"They have also agreed to my terms as to arrange- 
ments. I will be introduced by the President, who 
is a Lutheran minister of German blood, and the 
prayer will be by a Roman Catholic priest of German 
birth, Father Vottman. He is a major in the regular 
army, an old chaplain, and a Monsignor in the 
Church. He helped immensely in adjusting the 
Philippine church troubles. 



GERMANS IN AMERICA 189 

" I propose also to say a word to them on the wis- 
dom of the Lutheran Church making Enghsh the 
church language in this country. Otherwise, the 
Lutheran Church, powerful as it now is, must go 
the way of the Dutch Reformed Church to which I 
have the honor to belong. Had it changed to English, 
it would in all probability be one of the leading 
churches in New York at least. But it stuck to 
Dutch too long; the younger people drifted away 
until, too late, English was made the church lan- 
guage. I would very much regret a like fate for the 
Lutheran Church. I want it to continue, as it is 
to-day, a permanent and powerful factor in American 
life." 

Returning East, Colonel Roosevelt spoke regret- 
fully of the changed position the German found 
himself in in this country. 

"I was," he said, "very sorry at the changes in 
Milwaukee. This was my first visit there, you know, 
since that madman shot me. Before, when I went to 
Milwaukee, my German friends were a happy lot. 
After a meeting I would go to their club, there would 
be light refreshments, singing, real good-fellowship. 
Now all this is changed. Men like Vogel, real Ameri- 
cans, who are doing their full duty, are saddened by 
the position some Germans would put all of their 
kind in America in. They have no doubt of the out- 



I90 TALKS WITH T. R. 

come of the war — they know it must end in Ger- 
many's defeat; but, naturally, they fear the reaction 
on the Germans in this country. Some of them in 
Milwaukee have behaved very badly. I do not refer 
to Berger and his class. I mean a higher, and sup- 
posedly more respectable, type. 

"Some few of the wealthier and more influential 
ones have been foolish enough to start a sort of boy- 
cott. Take Willett Spooner. Spooner had a splendid 
law practice, largely with Germans here. Overnight 
almost, I am told, it fell away. Spooner had given 
offence by taking a strong American position. That, 
of course, is rough on Spooner, but he will survive it. 
The very people who tried to hurt him will be glad 
to go back to him and ask his help when this thing is 
over. They will suffer, not he. 

"The German in this country has been a good citi- 
zen. He has been thrifty and hard-working as a very 
general rule; he has contributed to the welfare of 
every community in which he lived. He has been 
law-abiding — in a word, has met his obligations 
squarely. This is particularly true of the older Ger- 
mans. Properly handled there would have been very 
little difficulty with them. If, from the start, it had 
been made clear to them that we were at war, not 
with them, but with the Germans in France and 
Belgium with guns in their hands trying to impose 



GERMANS IN AMERICA 191 

upon the world the things they left Germany to 
escape, and that they were expected and relied upon 
to do their full part just as any other group of citi- 
zens were expected to do theirs, there would have 
been little misunderstanding and very little of this 
feeling. 

"I have absolutely no sympathy with the over- 
zealous patriot who would persecute everybody here 
with a German name. It is all wrong. It is like the 
case of an old German waiter, Emil — huh, the last 
name has escaped me. I knew him when I was Police 
Commissioner. Not long since I met him as I was 
leaving the Metropolitan office. He spoke and I 
remembered him. I asked him how he was getting 
along. 

*" Oh, purty veil,' he said ; ' my two boys are gone, 
one in the army and one in the navy, my son-in-law 
is gone, and I have his wife and the grandchildren 
home with me, but still some people call me "dot 
damn Cherman." ' 

"I told him he was a pretty good American and 
that I was proud to know him, and that he should 
be proud of his two fine sons and his son-in-law. 

"Now nothing is made by mistreating men like 
that poor waiter. A real American would not do it. 
Instead, he'd devote his attention to the men on 
soap boxes, no matter who they may be, that are 



192 TALKS WITH T. R. 

preaching peace without victory or praying for the 
defeat of one of our brave alHes." 

The question of German immigration after the 
war coming up, Colonel Roosevelt expressed doubt 
as to how extensive it might be. 

" I am not as sure as some persons seem to be that 
there will be any great migration of Germans to this 
country," he said. " It will all depend, I suppose, on 
the condition Germany is left in by the war. For one 
thing, I would not oppose such immigration, pro- 
vided the immigrants were of the kind that come 
here prepared to work. Most Germans, I have found, 
have some trade. Very frequently they are highly 
skilled along special lines. Such men should be wel- 
comed. The other kind should be barred." 

Again, in Toledo, this time before we entered the 
war, and while the Colonel was talking politics, he 
found that there were many Germans in his audi- 
ence. As in every other place his talk was mainly 
preparedness, emphasized, I thought, because one 
of the committee expressed the hope that many 
Germans in it would not take offence at what he 
might say. 

"My dear fellow," said he, "they will not take 
offence because I am going to talk straight Ameri- 
canism to them. They will not object to that. Why, 
one of the most wonderful books of the war was 



GERMANS IN AMERICA 193 

written by a German in your town — at least he is 
of German blood. It is called 'Their True Alle- 
giance.' His name is Ohlinger. I '11 be obliged to you 
if you will have him located for me." 

''Did you notice that I offended anybody in that 
audience?" he asked after the meeting. 

I assured him I had not. 

"I did not think you would," he replied, adding: 

"Oh, for a little courage and plain horse sense in 
the handling of this whole German question! It 
would make things so much easier." 



PLAYING THE GAME 

JULIUS KAHN, Member of Congress from Cali- 
fornia, did yeoman work in forcing through the 
draft and other war measures, when Mr. Wilson's 
party leaders in the House chose to refuse their aid. 
None were more appreciative of this work than 
Colonel Roosevelt. In private and in public he ex- 
tolled the Californian as typical of those of German 
blood and birth in the United States to whom their 
naturalization decrees were more than "scraps of 
paper." 

Imagine, therefore, my surprise when early in 
April, 191 8, Colonel Roosevelt refused point-blank 
to take part in the "Julius Kahn day" celebration 
arranged for April 30 by St. Cecile, New York's far- 
famed "actors' " lodge of Masons. The surprise was 
the more complete because I was sure the Colonel 
approved of the demonstration for the effect it might 
have in rousing the spirit that demanded "peace 
through overwhelming victory." 

"No," said he, after I had repeated the message 
given me by R. W. George Loesh, who was in charge 
of the affair, " I will not take part in the celebration, 
though I wish you 'd thank the boys for remembering 
me. It is out of the question. On that I am as adamant." 



PLAYING THE GAME 195 

"Colonel," I asked, "will you come if I make it a 
personal matter? This is the first thing St. Cecile has 
ever asked me to do, and I 'd like to do it. They do 
wish you would come. Now, won't you?" 

"Jack," said he, "I am surprised that you do not 
see how impossible it is for me to do as you ask. I 
really am. I am surprised that Bro. Loesh or any 
one else should ask it. For me to attend would be 
absolutely unfair to Kahn. Can't you see that?" 

I confessed that I could not. 

"I cannot," said I, "conceive how it would be 
unfair to any man in the world for you to attend a 
celebration in his honor. Why, at this stage, it 's the 
greatest honor any American could have paid him!" 

"Jack, your loyalty to me, your affection for me 
if I may so term it, has destroyed for the moment 
your perspective. You know I like Kahn, that I 
have a very high regard for him as a man and as a 
citizen. I 'd do anything to help Kahn. I won't hurt 
him. You don't see it now. Let me explain it for 
you. 

"On your own statement, Kahn was raised in St. 
Cecile thirty-odd years ago when, to use your own 
words, he was a ' ham actor,' and wholly unknown to 
fame. As such he went West, took up law, and finally 
landed in Congress. All this time, as you say, he 
retained his membership in his mother lodge. And 



196 TALKS WITH T. R. 

how a dozen or so years ago, when he happened in 
town on a lodge day, he almost had to work his way 
in, so few of the active members knew him. 

"Now he is about to visit it again, not as an 
humble, almost unknown member, but, if you please, 
almost as a hero, as a type of hero, to be received 
by all of the big men in the Craft, wdth all the honors 
the Craft may bestow on a member who's made 
good in an extraordinary way. That is as it should 
be. The dramatic values of the contrast will not 
escape your associates, I 'm sure. It should be a splen- 
did affair with Kahn in the centre of the stage all the 
time. That is as it should be, for it is his day. 

"It would not be that way were I to attend. I 
know what would happen. So do you. I 'm not im- 
modest when I say it would be a Kahn-Roosevelt 
day, or more likely a Roosevelt- Kahn day, with 
Kahn playing second fiddle part of the time at least. 

" Don't you see how unfair that would be to Kahn? 
It would not be square; it would n't be playing the 
game. It's to be his day, and he's entitled to the 
whole of it. Furthermore, so far as the effect on the 
outside public is concerned, there'll be more inspira- 
tion to intensive war work if it is what you have 
planned — a demonstration in honor of an humble 
Congressman of German birth, but a real American 
who did his full duty with no truculent ex-President 



PLAYING THE GAME 197 

cluttering up the stage. It would be wrong from 
every angle. You see it now, I know." 

"However, Colonel," I said, "you won't mind 
sending a letter of declination in which you record 
some of the nice things you've been saying. Kahn, 
I'm sure, would like that?" 

"Certainly," he replied, "I'm glad to do that. 
That won't interfere with the fitness of things; at 
least it should not detract anything from what should 
be a great day." 

In his talk with me Colonel Roosevelt spoke of the 
values of contrasts, and as I write I cannot but re- 
cord, for like reason, the excuse given by a public 
official, then suffering from the sting of the Presiden- 
tial Bee, for not appearing at the celebration after 
promising to do so. 

"Why," he asked, "should I do anything to help 
boom a man who may be one of my rivals for the 
Presidential nomination?" 

The man to whom the explanation was made 
missed the unconscious jest in the answer. Like the 
man who made it, he had forgotten Section 5, of 
Article 2, of the Constitution. This reads: 

"No person except a natural-born citizen . . . 
shall be eligible to the office of President." 



MAKING UP WITH TAFT 

JACK, I've seen old Taft, and we're in perfect 
harmony on everything." 

Colonel Roosevelt fairly beamed the words — if 
one may be said to beam a word — in his rooms in 
the Blackstone Hotel one Sunday in May, 191 8. He 
had just come in from his first real meeting with 
Judge Taft since the break in 1912, and he was 
happy as the proverbial lark. 

"We're in perfect harmony on everything," he 
repeated. "Now hurry, for we've got to make a 
train." 

I say "real meeting" advisedly, for, while it is 
true that Mr. Taft and the Colonel met during the 
1916 campaign in the Union League Club, at the 
request of Mr. Hughes's managers, the "reconcilia- 
tion meeting" was anything but cordial or friendly. 

"It was," as the Colonel remarked at one time, 
"one of those friendly affairs, where each side, be- 
fore entering the meeting-place, made sure its hard- 
ware was in good working order." 

The Union League meeting, was arranged solely 
for the effect it might have on the country ; it was as 
much a staged affair as though Belasco had planned 
it, though it lacked the Belasco touch. Because it was 



MAKING UP WITH TAFT 199 

so poorly (or so palpably) staged, its only effect on 
the public was to provoke a rather large grin. 

The Chicago meeting, on the other hand, was as 
satisfying as it was unexpected ; there were hearts in 
the hand-clasps. For this reason, the effect on the 
country, and more particularly the Republican part 
of the country, was all the Union League meeting 
was not. 

Colonel Roosevelt's serious illness in the early 
part of 191 8 opened the door to the real reconcilia- 
tion. Mr. Taft took advantage of the Colonel's re- 
covery to write him a warm-hearted letter of con- 
gratulation — a typical Taft letter. On his part the 
Colonel reciprocated in kind, saying, among other 
things, in his note to Mr. Taft, that his was the first 
letter he was answering. This paved the way to other 
letters, and when, soon after, the Colonel delivered 
his "keynote" speech to the Maine Republican 
Convention, the manuscript was submitted to Mr. 
Taft for his opinion. Mr. Taft suggested a few 
changes in its wording, changes the Colonel gladly 
made. 

From this point mutual friends helped the situa- 
tion along by repeating to Colonel Roosevelt kindly 
things Mr. Taft had said about the Colonel. The 
Colonel was particularly appreciative of a story told 
by Governor W. L. Harding of Iowa. 



200 TALKS WITH T. R. 

The Governor, it appeared, had been a guest at 
dinner with Mr. Taft, where, over the coffee, all 
hands turned to discussing the conduct of affairs in 
Washington. 

"When I see the way things are going in Washing- 
ton, it makes my blood fairly boil," Mr. Taft was 
quoted as saying, " but when I think how much mad- 
der they must make T. R., I feel a whole lot better." 

"From the bottom of my heart, I am sorry for 
Roosevelt," he went on after the laugh had subsided. 
"Here he is, the one man in the country best capable 
of handling the situation, denied any part in it, and 
compelled to sit in the bleachers and see the ball 
booted all over the lot." 

Some one — I know not who — repeated this 
story to the Colonel, and in telling of it, the Colonel 
added that "Taft was not much better off." 

"Taft," said he, "could do real work in Washing- 
ton — ■ he could do great work abroad. Think what 
he could do in Baker's place; what a splendid thing 
it would be to have him in Paris or London or Rome! 
Just think of the appeal that would make to the 
imagination of the people of Europe!" 

On the morning of the Hotel Blackstone meeting. 
Colonel Roosevelt arrived in Chicago en route for 
Des Moines. He planned a quiet day — a meeting 
with Richard Lloyd Jones, of Madison, Wisconsin, 




IN BARBADOS 



MAKING UP WITH TAFT aoi 

and a private talk to an editorial association in the 
afternoon, a late dinner, and an early train. After 
the talk to the editors, he advised me to ' ' take the 
evening off." 

"There won't be a thing doing," said he. "I'm 
going to get into some dry clothing" (he was per- 
spiring very freely), "have a late dinner, and get 
ready for the ten-o'clock train. You had better take 
the evening off, but be back by nine- fifteen sure." 

My idea of taking the evening off was to stick 
about the hotel lobby, for travelling with the Colonel, 
as all newspaper men who have toured with him will 
testify, was serious business. One never knew what 
might turn up, and in the months immediately 
before and after our entry into the war, there was 
always the chance that some German fanatic might 
seek to aid the Fatherland by destroying him. The 
Colonel gave this danger small thought, but it was 
present nevertheless. 

Therefore I had my dinner, filed a brief despatch 
for New York, and was chatting with the Western 
Union operator in the hotel, when, suddenly, came 
the sound of cheers from the dining-room. They were 
not the customary well-bred cheers one looks for at 
any time in a hotel like the Blacks tone — rather 
were they the kind one hears in a mass meeting in the 
midst of an exciting campaign. 



202 TALKS WITH T. R. 

Both telegraph operators and the telephone girl 
paused in their work — cheers in the Blackstone on a 
Sunday night are so unusual. I made for the dining- 
room. 

In the Blackstone the dining-room is some nine 
or ten steps above the level of the office floor. These 
steps were crowded by men and women who a mo- 
ment before were seated in the lobby — all very 
much excited about something. 

"What's up?" I asked a man on the lower step. 

"Nothing; only T. R, and Taft's got together," 
he replied. "They're in there holding an old-home 
week." 

"Old-home week" seemed to describe it perfectly. 
At the far side of the dining-room at a small table 
by a window sat the two ex- Presidents. Mr. Taft 
was beaming, and Colonel Roosevelt, leaning half 
across the table, was expressing himself very ear- 
nestly. It was for all the world like two old soldiers 
met, after many years, at a G.A.R. reunion. 

I left the crowded stairs to bulletin New York, 
"Roosevelt and Taft dining together" — for it so 
appeared from the stairs, and returned to await the 
end of the meal. On my way I met Mr. Taft. 

"Judge," I asked, "won't you tell me about your 
meeting with Colonel Roosevelt? Was it by appoint- 
ment?" 



MAKING UP WITH TAFT 203 

"Lord, no!" said he. "I came here from St. Louis 
on War Labor Board business — we have a session 
here to-morrow — I was halfway to my room when 
I heard he was in the dining-room and going to leave 
in a few minutes, so I just dropped in on him to pay 
my respects. Is n't he looking splendid? I never saw 
him looking much better." 

"Did you talk poHtics?" 

"Son," laughed Mr. Taft, "you really do not ex- 
pect me to answer that question, do you?" 

"Well, I am safe in assuming you did." 

"Now don't you assume anything," he com- 
manded. "You just quote Mr. Taft as saying Colonel 
Roosevelt and he discussed patriotism and the state 
and welfare of the Nation. That will cover every- 
thing." 

I left Mr. Taft to go to the Colonel's suite, arriving 
just as he came bouncing in. 

"Jack," he exclaimed, "did you know I've just 
met old Taft?" 

"I have just left him," I replied. "How did it 
happen?" 

" I was never so surprised in my life," he answered. 
"I thought I heard some one call 'Theodore' and I 
looked up just as he reached the table with his hand 
stuck out. There was so much noise being made by 
the people in the room I am not quite sure what he 



204 TALKS WITH T. R. 

said. I think it was, 'Theodore, I am glad to see 
you.' 

" I grabbed his hand and told him how glad I was 
to see him. By Godfrey, I never was so surprised in 
my life. He w as farthest from my thoughts. I no more 
thought of him being in Chicago than in Timbuctoo. 
But was n't it a gracious thing for him to do? Now, 
I don't know what to tell you. What did he say?" 

I repeated what Mr. Taft had given me for publi- 
cation. 

"Taft is right," he said. "That covers it. Let it 
stand at that. But I am mighty glad to tell you that 
he agrees with me on everything. He feels exactly 
as I do about those people in Washington and the 
way they are carr>'ing on." 

A few minutes later, still beaming, the Colonel 
came downstairs to take a cab for the train. 

"Jack," said he, "I don't mind telling you how 
delighted I am. I never felt happier over anything 
in my life. It was splendid of Taft." 

"It is a big night's work," I said, "and notice to 
the world that the party is really and truly united. 
It will be so taken in Washington." 

" I believe you are right." And then, with a laugh, 
"It is too bad to spoil Mr. Wilson's breakfast! 

"But the important thing, Jack, is something 
more than our meeting. Did I tell you that he is in 



MAKING UP WITH TAFT 205 

perfect harmony with me — that we agree perfectly 
on the way things are going in Washington? That is 
important. What did you wire New York?" 

"Just a brief despatch, emphasizing the warmth 
of your meeting. I had no time for more. I think it 
well to let the fact sink in and follow the story with 
one bringing out the significance of the meeting. 
I am also wiring John King a personal message." 

"Good; John should know, by all means. You will 
know what to tell him." 

No more was said on the way to the station — the 
Colonel was busy with his thoughts and — humming 
his favorite battle air, "Garry Owen." 



MONEY-GRUBBERS 

1FIND I can work best with those people in whom 
the money sense is not too highly developed," 
said Colonel Roosevelt one afternoon in the course 
of a chat on the veranda at Sagamore Hill. He had 
just come in from a tramp about the estate and he 
was in a speculative mood. 

"With the Irishman in whom as a whole it is lack- 
ing rather than with the Jew in whom as a rule the 
money sense is dominant, I get the best results," 
said he. "Of course there are exceptions on both 
sides! — Blank [naming a well-known New Yorker] 
is pure Irish and as keen after money as any man I 
ever knew, while Oscar Straus, a pure Jew, has the 
money sense as little developed as is possible in any 
man — and I would treat every man as an individual. 

"The weakness of the Jew, however, is in his lack 
of national spirit. I do not like that any more than I 
like the Ultramontanes among the Catholics, among 
whom are some of the friends I think most of. 
Archbishop John Ireland — what a magnificent 
American he is! Take IVIgr. Cassidy — a bully fellow. 

"Do you know that I often find the impulsive 
Irishman, who may be depended upon to throw all 
caution to the winds when he is speaking for himself, 



MONEY-GRUBBERS 207 

more than likely to be the most cautious of men 
when speaking for or advising another? Why? I pre- 
sume it is largely due to his delight in tearing an op- 
ponent to pieces and his habit of always being on the 
alert for an opening in the armor of another. Advis- 
ing you, he is apt to put himself in an opponent's place 
and do what an opponent would do — pick holes in 
your argument. It is, I presume, one expression of 
Irish wit, which, after all, is mental alertness." 

"Why," I asked, "do you think this type of Irish- 
man fails to exercise this caution in his own affairs? " 
"Partly because no man can appraise his own 
words at exactly the value others may place on them, 
and partly to the Irishman's proverbial disregard 
of personal danger. He is, I have found, as careful 
of his friends as he is reckless of himself. It is a mani- 
festation of his loyalty. 

"Take dear old Joe Murray as an example. Joe is 
frankness itself when it comes to speaking for him- 
self, in voicing his own opinion. But he's never got 
over the fear that I, in my rashness, may say some- 
thing that may injure me. More than once I know I 
have caused him worry. He's been as worried in my 
later campaigns as he was when he started me in 
politics, by having me nominated for the Assembly. 
You know that he called my personal canvass off 
because he thought I was too rash in telling a liquor 



2o8 TALKS WITH T. R. 

dealer he was not paying taxes enough? He's always 
been fearful of like outbreaks. 

"Old Joe lacks the money sense. I can understand 
that. But I am frank to confess I cannot understand 
the man who, having enough for all his needs and 
those of his family, pursues more money for the mere 
sake of piling it up. 

"Mind you, I am not referring now to the man 
who, in work that benefits a whole community, ac- 
quires a great fortune incidental to his service to the 
community. With that type of man, money is not 
all-important — it is not the goal — and he is en- 
titled to what may fairly come to him. Such men are 
necessary in great industries — are a natural by- 
product, so to speak, of productive industry. 

"The man I refer to is the man who pi'»"sues money 
for the sake of piling it up — the money-grubber. 
For the life of me, I cannot understand what he 
wants more than enough for. Of course I understand 
that with this type getting money is a game to be 
played like chess, but what I do not understand is his 
mental processes. 

" Money per se has never meant anything to me. I 
have never had so much that I did not have to work, 
and usually I have had to consider carefully and plan 
my outlays. Otherwise I would have become bank 
rupt. But I have always had all I needed for real 



MONEY-GRUBBERS 209 

comfort for myself and my family in the modest 
style we would have preferred to live had we the 
wealth of Croesus. 

"In more recent years I have had a comfortable 
surplus, but it has meant very little to me except for 
what we may have been able to do with it. 

" Mind you, I do not undervalue money and I am 
not talking against thrift. What I mean is that the 
really wise person is he who tries to see money in its 
real perspective. The young man who is careful and 
thrifty — not miserly, but thrifty — makes the best 
citizen. Conversely, the man with a lot more money 
than he needs who spends it in lavish display is not 
a good citizen, though he may think he is. His exam- 
ple to others, not so wealthy as he, is bad ; his influ- 
ence upon others is bad. 

" It all comes down to the question of service. The 
man with money, in an industry producing wealth 
and enriching the community, is doing real service. 
The man who having money devotes himself to pub- 
lic service, not necessarily politics, because he is 
free from the need of earning a living, is a good citi- 
zen. His money is a blessing to him and a service to 
the community. 

"But the money-grubber — I do not understand 
him, and I am sorry for him. I *m Pharisee enough to 
rejoice that I am not as he is." 



NEW BLOOD IN THE G. O. P. 

BY the way, do you know Beekman Winthrop, 
Governor of Rhode Island?" Colonel Roose- 
velt asked at Sagamore Hill one afternoon. 

"Not very well," I said. "I think I've met him 
but once. He seemed a decent sort." 

" I met him a few days ago," the Colonel went on, 
"and I was just a bit surprised to find him a pretty 
regular sort of a fellow. I had thought he was more 
of a Newport society chap. 

"I was pleased to find he is surrounding himself 
with men of all race stocks that show themselves to 
be really American. Funny, too, but Colt and Lippett 
[Senators from Rhode Island] rather oppose that sort 
of thing. They have gotten where they are willing 
to admit a French Canadian to full fellowship, but 
they balk at the Irish. He is gradually working these 
young men in so that eventually they will hold places 
of power and responsibility in the party. They seem 
to feel that the party is a sort of club. 

" It is so silly to oppose the entrance of new blood 
into the party. To do so is to fail to recognize that 
there are new racial elements in the community that 
are coming to the point where they must be consid- 
ered politicalh', for they are political factors. 



NEW BLOOD IN THE G. O. P. 211 

"The wise thing to do is to welcome all that are 
good in these new elements into the party, make 
them feel at home, and give them a share of the work 
that is to be done, and let them, in time, work into 
the places that belong to them. Otherwise your party 
is apt to become too exclusive to be of value when 
it comes to a real test. 

"Beekman Winthrop has an adjutant on his staff 
who is a Jew. He's a bright young fellow who's come 
along on his merit. At dinner the other night two of 
the most prominent party men there hardly spoke 
to him. I remarked to Winthrop that it was as cad- 
dish a thing as I had ever seen. He said, 'You ought 
to be around and see how many petty things of that 
kind I have to put up with.' 

''From now on, I am for Beekman Winthrop. 
Any one who thinks he 's little more than a Newport 
society chap is going to be disappointed. 

" I am strong for the type of Irishman represented 
by Jimmy Gallivan [Representative James A. Gal- 
livan of Massachusetts] and Grifhn of Rhode Island. 
I can work with them, for they are Americans. 
They belong." 

"Jimmy Gallivan," said I, "is a Roosevelt Demo- 
crat. He stands for everything you do." 

" I know it. Do you know he described the recent 
contest in his district as Roosevelt and Gallivan 



212 TALKS WITH T. R. 

against Burleson and Curley? The day after the pri- 
mary he wired me that the Roosevelt-Gallivan ticket 
had won. 

" I can work with men Hke him. Gallivan is better 
than his part>^ His natural inclinations, his training, 
and his experience make him better. Had things 
been managed differently in Massachusetts I have 
no doubt Gallivan and many others like him would 
as young men have gone into the Republican Party. 
As it was, they probably were not welcomed be- 
cause of a short-sighted policy of exclusiveness. Now 
that is changing as it should change. It should not 
be possible to tell a man's politics by his name." 

Mr, Gallivan, by the way, was the means uncon- 
sciously used on one occasion by Colonel Roosevelt 
to show of what little consequence he considered 
most members of Congress. It was incidental to the 
fight in the House to put the Harding amendment 
to the Army Bill, under which the Colonel might 
have been given a commission. In this fight the 
Associated Press quoted "Gallivan (Dem. Mass.)" 
as making a strong plea for the amendment and an 
attack upon Secretar>^ Baker. 

"Who is Gallivan?" the Colonel asked. 

"Gallivan, of Boston — the old Ninth, the South 
Boston-Dorchester District," I answered. "Youknow 
him." 



NEW BLOOD IN THE G. O. P. 213 

"No, I'm sure I do not," said the Colonel. 

"Of course you do," I ventured to contradict. 
"You certainly know Gallivan, the old Harvard 
second baseman?" 

"Know him?" asked the Colonel. "Why, of 
course, I know him! But do you know I didn't 
realize that Jimmy Gallivan, the great second base- 
man, had become a mere Congressman!" 



SPEED ON THE TRIGGER 

OF the many traditions that grew up about 
Theodore Roosevelt was that of his being in- 
stant on the trigger. Indeed, enemies have not hesi- 
tated to accuse him of going off at half-cock. Nothing 
could be farther from the facts. Of all the men I 
have known, in and out of public life, I have known 
none of any consequence whatever who was more 
careful of his premises before moving than he. Com- 
pared to him the man who first laid down the prin- 
ciple, "Be sure you are right, then go ahead," was 
a speed maniac. 

The tradition was and is mainly due to the Colo- 
nel's ability, almost uncanny, to see months in ad- 
vance of most mortals, to his fondness for work, 
and his habit of practising the preparedness he 
preached. In public matters it was not unusual for 
him to have a speech on some phase of the situation 
likely to be uppermost ready weeks or months in 
advance. When the time seemed ripe — pop! and the 
Colonel had his say in speech, public statement, or 
letter answering some correspondent. 

As I write I have before me two typewritten man- 
uscripts. One, labelled "tentative draft for letter 
protesting against the establishment of a civilian 



SPEED ON THE TRIGGER 215 

engineer corps in the navy," is incompletely dated, 
and the salutation is left blank by the typist. In the 
Colonel's distinctive hand appears the name "Mr. 
Reuterdahl," and a few words from his pen and his 
signature are at the end. This was a document pre- 
sented by one interested in the matter. To help the 
cause along, the Colonel made the draft his own, 
and sent the completed letter to his naval artist 
friend. 

Another typewritten manuscript left the typist 
as a statement on a "Naval Training Cruise." As it 
left the Colonel it was a draft for a complete letter, 
his hand supplying date line, an address, and a few 
words in closing before his signature. This went to 
a Mr. Slocum, after a secretary had typed it, while 
copies of the letters and a memorandum on the 
cruise, written by the Colonel, went to the press. 
At the moment the navy's needs were important 
and, as usual, he was ready. 

Yet another instance. While the Colonel was put- 
ting in his hardest licks for preparedness he one day 
read the "cabinet" a speech he intended to deliver 
when opportunity offered. A fortnight passed, then 
in came a letter from St. Louis. 

"Here," said the Colonel, "is where I make use 
of that speech I read you the other day. I will send 
it to this man in answer to his letter." 



2i6 TALKS WITH T, R. 

Next day, not more than forty-eight hours after 
he had written Colonel Roosevelt, the man in St. 
Louis read in his morning paper perhaps a column 
of a letter answering him. The following day the 
letter itself, three to four columns long, reached 
him. It would be difficult to convince that man 
that Colonel Roosevelt on receipt of his letter did 
not drop all other business and proceed to answer 
him. His friends, knowing some of the facts, would 
think as he did. Sure the Colonel was quick on the 
trigger! 

But only in the sense that the forehanded gunner, 
waiting with gun in hand for the ducks to rise, is 
quick. 



ROOT, MOST VALUED OF COUNSELLORS 

IN the traditions that have grown up about 
Colonel Roosevelt, none has been more persist- 
ently circulated by political foes than that which 
described him as being headstrong and impatient of 
advice or criticism. 

This was the direct opposite of the truth. He wel- 
comed criticism even when he did not agree with it, 
and to make this clear to me when I one day apolo- 
gized for having ventured to criticize something he 
had prepared for publication, he told why he held 
Elihu Root to have been the most valuable member 
of his Cabinet. 

"That is exactly what I want," said he. "It's 
exactly what I want. That is why you are more val- 
uable to me than I am to you, why I talk so freely 
to you. I want your opinions and I want you to fight 
me when you think I am wrong. I 'm not omniscient, 
and no one knows it better than L 

"It is because Root would not hesitate to express 
an opinion that he was immensely more valuable to 
me in the Cabinet than John Hay was. Hay was a 
splendid character, likable and lovable, but he would 
never criticize. He would n't fight for an opinion. 



21 8 TALKS WITH T. R. 

Root would, and he'd give persistent battle for his 
viewpoint. He was a most dogged fighter. 

"Sometimes I would accept his views, sometimes 
I would allow his opinion to modify my own; more 
often, perhaps, I would ignore him altogether and 
follow my own ideas. But his frankness, his out- 
spokenness, were of great help in making me see all 
sides of a question. 

"It was his practice to analyze everything from 
the standpoint of the other fellow. If there was a hole 
in an argument, he'd point it out. If there was a 
place where the other fellow could kick a hole, he 'd 
proceed to plug that point if he could. Lord, I wish 
you could have seen the condition in which State 
papers came back to me after Root had gone over 
them! Sometimes I would not recognize my own 
child, and sometimes I was very thankful I could not. 
On top of all that Root was honest and absolutely 
loyal. It was his idea of loyalty to fight if necessary 
to make his friends see where they were about to err. 

"John Hay had no such value. He would approve 
en bloc anything I put before him. 

"Now, there was, of course, a reason for this. 
It lay in the different lives they led. Hay, as you 
know, had led a quiet and rather sheltered life — he 
had never been in real contact with life, he'd never 
had to fight for anything. 



ROOT, MOST VALUED COUNSELLOR 219 

"Root's life, you might say, was one long fight. 
He had to fight for everything he ever got. All his 
life he 'd been doing business with big, domineering, 
strong-bitted men like the elder Morgan, men in the 
habit of having theirownway in all things. With them, 
Root simply had to stand up and fight to get them 
to do things the way he saw they ought to be done. 

"I have n't the slightest doubt that on many an 
occasion he had to become rather strenuous to make 
his points stick, but I '11 wager he made them stick 
and that his employers were glad afterward that he 
had made them stick. It was his idea of loyalty to 
give his associates the full benefit of everything he 
had in view, even if he had to fight to make them 
take it. 

''These habits he brought into the Cabinet and 
these made him, as I've said, its most valuable 
member. 

"I have been fortunate in having had a few such 
advisers as Root. Leonard Wood is one of them. 
Wood never took advantage of our friendship to ask 
for anything he was interested in personally, but in 
matters that concerned me and my personal fortunes, 
he has been the frankest of candid critics. Jack 
Greenaway is another. He was one of the most valu- 
able men in my regiment. In his own way, old Joe 
Murray has been invaluable. Joe has always felt a 



220 TALKS WITH T. R. 

paternal interest in me from the fact that he started 
me in poHtics. He would be the last to presume, but 
if Joe thought he saw breakers ahead or had some 
bit of information he thought I should have, he was 
never bashful about presenting it. 

"Murray has one trait developed to a remarkable 
degree — his ability to sense public feeling on any 
subject. Repeatedly his reports on the drift of things 
have been right when men, supposed to be experts 
and who had every facility for getting the facts, were 
wrong. Joe has only common sense and a faculty of 
detaching himself from his wishes. More than once 
he 's shown me where I was mistaken or had made a 
miscalculation. 

" I have always been glad to have such men about. 
I have, however, no use for the man who criticizes 
everything, who cuts in just because he thinks he 
has got to or because he wishes to air his superior 
wisdom. These are as bad, almost, as those cautious 
souls who are always afraid of saying something that 
may cost votes. I've known some who, had they 
lived in the days of Moses and had access to him, in 
all probability would have declared against the pub- 
lication of the Decalogue on the ground that some 
persons would be offended and votes lost. 

"The honest and intelligent critic I welcome, al- 
ways welcomed, and always will welcome. 



ROOT, MOST VALUED COUNSELLOR 221 

"The man who cannot stand to have his plans and 
ideas criticized is a fool. The wise man will welcome 
criticism, so long as it is honest and intelligent. I 
know, and you do, men who want no one about that 
does not agree with them, men who are afraid of 
being told unpleasant truths. Such men are fools. 
In a long journey, as Emerson says, ' The truth, how- 
ever unpleasant, is the safest travelling companion.' " 



WITH THE ALLIES' ENVOYS 

JACK MITCHEL told me it was by directions 
from Washington that I was not asked to speak 
at the official welcome at the Waldorf. Apparently 
it is the idea to keep the visitors free from any pos- 
sible Roosevelt contagion. It won't succeed." 

Colonel Roosevelt was speaking of the dinner 
given by the City of New York to General Joffre 
and M. Viviani representing France, and Arthur J. 
Balfour, representing England, shortly after their 
arrival in this country following our entrance into 
the war. 

"That is why I went to the dinner given General 
Joffre by Mr. Frick," he went on. "You know my 
antipathy to dinners. I had no desire to meet such 
a group as I knew Mr. Frick would have there, and, 
when first invited, I declined. Then Mitchel came 
to see me. He explained that it was by orders of the 
State Department, which is really in charge of these 
visitors, that none but Joe Choate and himself were 
to be allowed to speak at City Hall or at the banquet. 
Nominally it is a city affair. Actually it is being di- 
rected by Mr. Lansing with Frank Polk in immedi- 
ate charge. 

"When he told me that and renewed his invita- 



WITH THE ALLIES' ENVOYS 223 

tion to Mr. Prick's dinner, I accepted. I am glad I 
did. I was seated next to the General, and when he 
found we could talk to one another — well, he did 
not talk much to any of the others. He did not tell 
me anything I did not know, or suspect. France does 
want our men. She wants them badly, more than she 
wants supplies. 

"Joffre has told Washington that. They must 
have men. Joffre, I find, understands the position 
we are in. He has no delusions." 

Next on the list of envoys to hold private confer- 
ence with the Colonel was Mr. Balfour. This was 
arranged by General Bridges, of the British Army, 
who called on the Colonel to ask when it would be 
convenient for him to receive Mr. Balfour. 

" I told him," said the Colonel describing the call, 
"that I would be very glad to see Mr. Balfour at any 
time, and as Sunday seemed to be his only open 
time, I suggested that he take tea with us Sunday 
afternoon. I explained to him, however, that on the 
hill here we never dine on Sunday. Instead we have 
what might be called a high tea, a most informal 
sort of a meal, and he *d have to take *pot luck.' 

"General Bridges replied that it would be to Mr. 
Balfour's exact liking, and it was agreed that they 
should come out Sunday." 

Mr. Balfour was Colonel Roosevelt's guest until 



224 TALKS WITH T. R. 

late into the night. When he had gone, Colonel 
Roosevelt, evidently much pleased with the visit, 
said they had canvassed the entire situation. 

"The British," said the Colonel, "doubt that 
Washington even now appreciates the needs of the 
hour. They still seem, from what these men say, to 
be of the opinion that we can successfully fight this 
war with dollars and vegetables — that Uncle Sam's 
part in it is to be that of a settler." 

Next the Italian mission, headed by the Prince 
d'Udine, went to Oyster Bay which was not in the 
official programme, the Italian Embassy having 
vetoed a proposal that it be included, on the nom- 
inal ground that royalty cannot visit a commoner, 
a decision overruled by the Prince. 

"The Prince expressed regret that he would not 
be able to visit the trophy room of which he said he 
had heard much," said the Colonel. "'I should be 
very glad to have you call,' I told him, 'but I was 
told you would find it impossible to do so.' The 
Prince's answer was something like 'Nonsense,' so 
he came out." 

Telling this story at the Harvard Club, Colonel 
Roosevelt took occasion to read a lesson in manners 
to a well-known reporter, who resented the idea that 
an ex-President of the United States was not the 
equal of any prince. 



WITH THE ALLIES' ENVOYS 225 

"You might have told him," said this man, "that 
you are as good as he is." 

"That is exactly what I should not have done," 
snapped the Colonel. "Whenever you find a man go- 
ing around declaring he is as good as somebody else, 
rest assured he does not believe he is and his decla- 
ration of equality or superiority is, in effect, an ad- 
mission of inferiority. The man who is as good as the 
other fellow does not have to advertise the fact." 

From Mayor Mitchel's explanation as to why he 
was not asked to speak at the public functions in 
honor of the Allies' envoys, and from his contact 
with some of them, Colonel Roosevelt gained the 
impression that more than ever he was "getting 
under their skins." 

"My efforts to make them do something seem to 
be getting under their skins in Washington," said he. 
"I am very glad of that if it only results in making 
them move in the right direction." 

Following his long talk with General Joffre, the 
Colonel was much amused by a report that the great 
Frenchman had increased his vocabulary by the 
addition of a single English word. 

"He pronounces it 'bull-lee,'" I told him. 

"The General, as usual, shows admirable judg- 
ment," he laughed. "It's a perfectly good word. I 
ought to know. I've used it years enough." 



POLICE AND CITIZENSHIP 

IF you'll promise to mail this promptly," said 
Colonel Roosevelt one day in 191 8, " I' 11 let you 
in on a State secret — our friend Arthur Woods is 
going to France on a special assignment. This con- 
tains some letters I am giving him to Clemenceau 
and others he may wish to meet. He is an excellent 
fellow, and I'd like to help him." 

"He made a good Police Commissioner, Colonel," 
I observed. 

"The best New York ever had," came the prompt 
answer. " I used to think that honor belonged to me, 
but it no longer does — Woods has been a better 
man than I was. If that letter were not sealed, you 'd 
find I say so in the enclosures. You like Woods?" 

"Yes, he's a friend of mine — he tried to help me 
get into the army." 

" Did n't you like his police work?" 

"Yes, sir, though until you had spoken I would 
not have ranked him quite so high. I always felt that 
niche was permanently filled by you." 

"I did myself; but to be entirely honest Woods 
has done everything I did as well as I ever did it, 
and he's done other things much better. In some 



POLICE AND CITIZENSHIP 227 

respects his work was easier, but this, I think, was 
more than offset by the changed conditions, the 
growth of the city, and a large increase in the po- 
tentially criminal classes. Crime has become more 
refined — by that I do not mean criminals have be- 
come cultured — but that, as in other trades, crim- 
inals have made progress. They have had newer and 
better tools to work with — the automobile is an 
example — new implements, and there have been 
more types of crime and criminals. 

"The wealth of the city has increased enormously, 
especially its easily portable wealth; it has spread 
out more, and more than ever the city has become to 
America what Paris is to the world — a playground 
for men and women, particularly men, with more or 
less money and more or less sense. This has served 
to bring in a larger number of criminal types of both 
sexes — you know what I mean — and it has made 
police work more difficult. 

''Under Woods's control of the police New York 
is cleaner than it ever was — infinitely cleaner than 
I was ever able to make it. New York, with all that 
has been said about it, has never been as unclean as 
other great cities of the world. I am not as familiar 
with vice abroad as I have been with what we have 
had in New York, but I know we have had less than 
London, Paris, Vienna, Berlin, or other big cities. 



228 TALKS WITH T. R. 

We have been cleaner, too, than Chicago, San 
Francisco, or other large American cities. 

"There has, it is true, been a sort of house- 
cleaning in many of our big cities, and, I believe, 
a general improvement taking in the cities of the 
country as a whole, but that does not detract from 
the credit due Woods. When I was Commissioner a 
reform wave in other cities usually sent the undesir- 
ables who were in funds here. Presumably that sort 
of thing is still the rule. 

"These changed conditions make it difficult to 
compare Woods's work with mine, but, on the whole, 
he did much better than I did, and as the friend of 
both, you might as well be prepared to concede it." 

"I won't attempt to argue with you, but did n't 
he have your work to build on?" I asked. 

"I'm glad you made that point — mighty glad. 
To an extent, yes, but so did others — General 
Bingham, and Waldo, for example. But only to a 
limited extent. Had he followed immediately after 
me, that would be wholly true, but he did not and 
in between much of my work was undone. Could he 
have come in immediately I left, he would have 
done even better. You see what I mean? 

"Woods is the sort of man I have always said 
should be in that office — he's a non-partisan; no 
politician had any strings on him. To get the best 



POLICE AND CITIZENSHIP 229 

results the head of the New York Police Department 
should be as nearly permanent as any public officer 
ever is, and he should be of the same non-partisan 
type that Woods has been while in office. The theory 
that a temporary Commissioner can get the best 
results from a permanent police force is unsound. It 
is this condition that was the life of what has been 
called 'the system.' We've all heard that 'the sys- 
tem ' is dead. I don't believe it. I don't believe Woods 
believes that. It has not been active, not been visible 
to the naked eye under Woods, but I think you'll 
find it has only been asleep. 

"Woods was a splendid executive. In all his work 
that I am familiar with he made one error that I 
consider serious. That was with Enright — now in 
his place. I told him, and I maintain now, that it 
was a serious error of judgment on his part, as it was 
on the part of others, not to give Enright the cap- 
taincy his place on the civil service list entitled him 
to. As I told Woods, the just thing to do was to give 
him his promotion and see what he did with it. If 
he did not do right, he could then break him. I did 
not think his activity in department politics, so long 
as there was nothing else provable against him, 
should be allowed to keep from him the place that 
it was admitted he was competent to fill. 

"That was bad judgment, I think, because it 



230 TALKS WITH T. R. 

tended to make a martyr of him. Woods would have 
done better to have tried other tactics. However, 
that was a thing he had to decide for himself. 

*' In all other matters he has done splendidly. You 
know that, despite my tyranny as Commissioner, I 
still have many good friends in the department. The 
police, except the crooks I made life miserable for, 
have always been friendly to me. What I mean is 
that I have always retained the intimate friendship 
of men who were under me in the department. These 
men know what is going on and they have all told 
me Woods was all right. They had no complaints 
to make, heard of none. They all rejoiced in the 
absence of 'pull.' That has been the curse of the 
department. 

"Under Woods the men have felt free, they all 
tell me, to do their work as it should be done. They 
have not had to consider the politicians. This has 
made their work easier and it has been better for the 
city. I am not certain but that the politicians like it. 
It makes less work for them, you know, less asking 
favors, less ' going to the front ' for some scapegrace 
in trouble. There have been Tammany leaders who 
have dropped men from their clubs as soon as they 
joined the police. This was not done to discourage 
men from joining the force; these leaders would help 
men prepare for their civil service examination and 



POLICE AND CITIZENSHIP 231 

that sort of thing, but they quit there. They found 
policemen retainers to be something of a nuisance 
and at times worse. 

"The poHce of New York, man for man, have 
always been a splendid lot. They have been just as 
honest as the administration and the head of the 
department wished them to be. There was more 
truth than poetry in what a captain or inspector — 
I think it was Herlihy — is said to have told Bing- 
ham: 'Put all your cards on the table. I'm a cop 
and I'll do what I'm told to do; only let me know 
whether you mean what you sa^^ when you say it.' 
It was something like that. That is the real spirit of 
the police — they'll be just as honest as the head of 
the department wishes them to be. If he's honest 
and not influenced by dishonest politicians, they will 
run straight. If dishonesty is favored or expected, 
the weaker ones most exposed to temptation will be 
dishonest. 

"Woods, of course, was honest and he was not 
tempted or controlled by politicians and others. 
Temperamentally he was admirably fitted for the 
place. Mitchel left him a free hand. Hence his suc- 
cess. 

"Woods, by the way, was one of the very few of 
Mitchel's appointments that did not weaken him 
with the voter. He blundered with Woods in not 



232 TALKS WITH T. R. 

making more of his administration in his campaign 
for reelection. It dould have been made a very 
strong point. Woods will do well in the army, but, 
personally, I would have preferred to have him stay 
at the head of the police. He would have been of 
vastly greater value to the country there than in the 
army. The law, however, made that impossible. 

"When he comes out of the army I expect he will 
go into some sort of business. His great executive 
ability will be in demand. I do not suppose he will 
ever return to the police department. He would 
hardly care to, though he never should have been 
allowed to leave it. 

"Some day you may be called upon for your opin- 
ion of police commissioners. If you are, put Arthur 
Woods first; if you wish, and feel that way, put me 
second. 

"And if any one asks your authority, say I told 
you so." 



COLONEL ROOSEVELT ON BOYS 

BETTER a boy you have to rescue from a police 
station because he whipped a cab driver or a 
'cop' than a 'Miss Nancy'" — that was Colonel 
Roosevelt's idea of the kind of boy one should have. 

This preference Colonel Roosevelt expressed to 
me one Sunday afternoon at Oyster Bay, following a 
question from him as to how my own boy was get- 
ting along. 

"All right," I replied, "only a little too much foot- 
ball and swimming and not enough school-work — • 
almost too much boy." 

"That's all right," he replied. "Don't let that 
worry you. Do you know you are fortunate in having 
a real boy? Some of the most splendid fellows I know 
have boys that if they were mine I 'd want to choke 
them — pretty boys who know all of the latest tango 
steps and the small talk, and the latest things in 
socks and ties — tame cats, mollycoddles, and their 
fathers real men, and their mothers most excellent 
women! Throw-backs, I suppose. I'd feel disgraced 
beyond redemption had I such boys. 

"Mine, thank God, have been good boys, a bit 
mischievous at times, all of them, but every boy is. 
Honestly, if I had to take my choice, I 'd rather have 



234 TALKS WITH T. R. 

a boy that I 'd have to go to the police station and 
bail out for beating a cab driver or a policeman, than 
one of the mollycoddle type. He might worry me, 
but he would n't disgrace me." 

On another occasion when he asked about my boy, 
I said he was in a bit of trouble. 

"He has had his first real bump," I said. "He 
flunked on his examinations, and probably will fail 
to get promotion. Consequently he feels badly." 

"Now, see here," advised the Colonel, "just don't 
be severe with him. Tell him I said, as an indulgent 
grandparent, that it really is not such a serious thing. 
You just tell him that for me and just make him feel 
more than ever that his father is his best friend and 
understands all about such things." 

"I have wired him as much," I said. 

"That's fine," said he. "You are on the right 
track. Sometimes we fathers do not realize how im- 
portant such things may be and w^e do not always do 
the right thing. We can become excited about some- 
thing and chastise or severely lecture a boy and make 
him afraid of us or we can sit down with him, man 
fashion, and reason the thing out. Sometimes, I grant 
you, chastisement is exactly what a boy needs most. 
Then he should have it. But when a boy 's in trouble 
as your lad is over something that really involves at 
most only carelessness, it often is a mistake to do 



COLONEL ROOSEVELT ON BOYS 235 

anything more than point out to him what a fooHsh 
fellow he's been and try to plan out some way in 
which he, not you, can undo the mischief. 

"In other words, every boy thinks his father is a 
pretty big man. One of mine told a teacher once his 
father was * it.' That confidence is something no man 
can afford to lose, and if he can make his boy see 
that the thing to do is to go to his father with his 
troubles, he has a pretty good guarantee that the 
boy won't get into any very serious messes. On the 
other hand, if the boy knows that he is going to get 
a dressing-down every time his parent hears of some 
venial sin of omission or commission, boylike, he's 
going to try and conceal as much as he can. He will, 
however, get advice abroad if he does not get it at 
home, and he's mighty lucky if the kind he gets 
abroad is the kind he should have. 

"That's why many a boy goes wrong who other- 
wise would in all probability have gone straight as H. 

"Yes, sir, it's a mighty bad thing for a boy when 
he becomes afraid to go to his father with his troubles, 
and it 's mighty bad for a father when he becomes so 
busy with other affairs, that he has no time for the 
affairs of his children. 

"I had a friend lament to me once over the fact 
that his boy was wild and was constantly getting 
into scrapes. He was absolutely out of control, the 



236 TALKS WITH T. R. 

father said, and he could do nothing with him. I 
knew the boy and liked him. He was a clean-cut, up- 
standing chap — the kind that looks you straight in 
the eye when he talks to you and shakes hands as 
though he meant it. I did not believe there was any- 
thing very wrong about the boy, and said so. Finally, 
the father asked me if I would n't talk to the boy. 
I said I would. 

'" I '11 send him to you to-morrow,' he said. 

'"No, you won't,' said I. 'You say the boy won't 
listen to you. Let me handle him in my own way.' 

"Well, I saw the boy, and asked him what all the 
reports I was hearing meant. There was n't anything 
serious, anything involving meanness or unmanli- 
ness — ■ the trouble was mainly misdirected energy. 
We talked things over — the boy doing most of the 
talking — and, well, finally I advised him to make 
up with his father. I forgot to say he had left home 
and gone to live with a maternal relative. 

"'Not much. Colonel,' said he. 'If I go to the 
Governor, he '11 explode. He explodes every time the 
least thing not on the schedule happens. It's been 
that way ever since I was a kid. He's never given 
me a chance to tell my story — no matter what hap- 
pens, I'm always wrong, I'm always to blame. It's 
always been that way.' 

" I told him that might be so, that it probably was 



COLONEL ROOSEVELT ON BOYS 237 

so, but that he should see his father anyway, and 
try and reach an understanding. ' You may not agree 
with me,' I told him, 'but your father's your best 
friend. You're more to him than all the rest of the 
world.' 

"'You may be right. Colonel,' said the boy, 'but 
I wish he'd take some other way of showing it.* 

"Then I sent for the father. I told him what the 
boy had said. I told him some things on my own 
account. He did not like them and came back at me 
— exploded just as the boy said he did with him. 
We were old friends and I did not mind that; in fact, 
as I look back, I rather enjoyed it. At any rate, I 
let him blow off steam. I knew he 'd feel ashamed of 
himself when he paused for breath. Then I said some 
things to him. 

"'If you talk to your boy the way you've been 
talking here,' said I, ' I don't wonder he's left home. 
I marvel that he did n't do it before he came of age, 
that he did n't run away or get into some scrape he 'd 
never get over. He 's got more in him than I thought 
he had. Now you go and get acquainted with him. 
Don't think you 've got to eat a lot of crow — the 
boy would n't like that. Meet him halfway, and let 
him see you are his friend. Go away for a week's 
fishing with him — it will do you both good. Why, 
man, all this trouble you 've brought on yourself — 



238 TALKS WITH T. R. 

you don't appreciate even now that your boy is a 
man — you 've been too busy making money to have 
paid much attention to him.' 

"It was strong medicine and the old fellow did not 
like it, though he swallowed it. He never referred to 
the matter again, but the boy did. 

"'Colonel,' said he, one day after his father had 
sort of taken him into partnership, 'you must have 
talked turkey to the Governor — he has n't been 
the same man since.' 

"'Young man,' said I, 'all I told him was to get 
acquainted with you, just as I told you to get ac- 
quainted with him. You folks simply did not know 
one another.' 

"That," he concluded, "is the advice I'd give 
evei*y father of a boy — get acquainted with him." 



HIS BOYS' CRITICS 

THE important thing," Colonel Roosevelt used 
to say to those who sought advice on going 
into the war, "is to get into the game. Get in as you 
would like to get in if you can, but get in!" 

One of the Roosevelt boys — Kermit — "got in" 
via a commission in the British army from which he 
later transferred to Pershing's forces. Kermit's enter- 
ing the service of another power aroused some criti- 
cism from Sinn Fein and pro-German sources. These 
declared it to be unpatriotic for an ex- President's son 
to serve under the flag of another country, criticism 
which aroused the Colonel's ire. 

" I do not care a hang how or where my boys or 
any other man's boys fight, so long as they do fight," 
he declared. "The important thing is that they are 
fighting and that they are fighting Germany. 

"Three of my boys are in the American army and 
in American uniforms. This one is going to fight in a 
British uniform. It does not make any difference to 
me what uniform they fight in. The main point is 
they are fighting, and I don't care a continental 
whether they fight in Yankee uniforms or British 
uniforms or in their nightshirts, so long as they are 
fighting. That's the main point — they are fighting." 



240 TALKS WITH T. R. 

Just the same the departure of the boys had its 
effect on the Colonel. He was more thoughtful and 
at times gave little hints that he dared not hope to 
see them all again. Better than most men, he realized 
that war means death, and that modern war justifies 
Sherman's famous saying. 

"Those infernal jacks!" he declared one day, 
"criticizing me for allowing my boy to go into the 
British army and talking as though I permitted my 
boys to go to war for the personal glory that might 
come to me! The infernal jacks do not know what 
modern war is like! They do not know what shell- 
fire is like! 

" It is n't pleasant for me or any other father, who 
knows the fearful things a high-explosive shell will 
do, to think of his boys being exposed to them — to 
think that at the moment they may be lying disem- 
bowelled in No Man's Land, but that is war. I hope 
and pray that they'll all come back, but before God, 
A 'd rather none came back than one, able to go, had 
/ stayed at home. I pray God will send them back to 
me safe and sound, but in my heart I know it is 
almost too much for me to hope for. I know my 
boys. I know they will do their part. That means 
danger. 

"I miss them, their mother misses them, their 
wives miss them. But let me tell you their wives are 



I 



HIS BOYS' CRITICS 241 

bricks — every one of them. They are splendid — 
just as splendid as their mother. I tell you I have 
been blessed not only in my boys, but in the young 
women my boys chose for wives. And that goes for 
my one son-in-law that is able to fight. Dick Derby 
is a splendid fellow and I am as fond of him and as 
proud of him as I am of my blood sons." 

Again, an Oklahoma editor aroused his ire by 
charging editorially that "Roosevelt's boys were 
enjoying soft snaps in safe berths." A rival editor 
wired the attack to the Colonel with a request for 
an answer. 

"The infernal cur!" he snapped when he read the 
wire; "the infernal cur who dares say that my boys, 
every one of them in combat service, have shirked 
their duty with the aid of my supposed influence. 
The infernal cur — how dare he say that of an 
American father! That man's a ghoul! I won't dig- 
nify him by replying to his contemptible attack, 
but I 'd like to have him here for just three minutes! 
He 'd wish he was in a front-line trench or some other 
comfortable place. The infernal cur!" 

The Colonel was "mad" from "toes to topknot," 
but in a moment he relaxed a bit. 

"I'm fooHsh, I suppose," said he, "to allow a 
creature like that to annoy me, but — well, God had 
a reason for everything he created, and I suppose he 



242 TALKS WITH T. R. 

created fellows like this that we might the better 
appreciate the decency in the great, big, preponder- 
ating majority." 

It was on his boys — and girls — that his mind 
was in the dark days of February, 191 8, when he 
was near to death in Roosevelt Hospital. 

"You had us worried," I told him on my first visit 
to the convalescent room. 

"Well," said he, " I was not worried about myself. 
I was not thinking of myself. I was thinking of my 
four boys. I tell you I am mighty proud of my boys 
and" — after a momentary pause — "just as proud 
of my two fine girls." 

This pride in the boys became more and more 
manifest as reports began to come back from the 
front of their valor. Always affable to strangers, he 
fairly beamed — that is the best way to describe it 
— at the visitor who asked, "How's the boys?" 

Sometimes the question would come from some 
one in a crowd, as in St. Louis, where, answering it, 
he made ten thousand laugh. 

"I met Peter Dunne the other day," he said. "You 
all know Peter Dunne — Mr. Dooley, you know. 
Well, Dunne said: 'Colonel, you want to watch out. 
The first thing you know they '11 be putting the name 
of Roosevelt on the map.'" 

He enjoyed the story and the laughs it raised, but 



HIS BOYS' CRITICS 243 

he was never without the thought that the boys were 
in danger. 

"Gray was right," he said, when Ted, Jr., was in 
a hospital. "You remember his hne, 'the paths of 
glory lead but to the grave'? He is not dangerously 
hurt, but I cannot expect all will escape, I can only 
hope." 

The end of the hope that all would return came to 
the Colonel one July night at Sagamore Hill. Phil 
Thompson, the resident correspondent at Oyster 
Bay, had called to ask about various matters, among 
them a cable message to the New York Sun from 
Raymond G. Carroll, one of its men at the front. 
This, Thompson mentioned last. 

"I have here," he told him, "a cable message to 
the Sun. The censor has cut it some, so that it is 
blind. It reads, 'Watch Oyster Bay for.' Have you 
any idea what it means?" 

"Something has happened to one of the boys," 
he answered. "It cannot be Ted and it cannot be 
Archie, for both are recovering from wounds. It is 
not Kermit, for he's not in the danger zone at the 
moment. So it must be Quentin. However, we must 
say nothing of this to his mother to-night." 

Confirmation of his fears came early the next 
morning. The Colonel took the blow exactly as one 
would expect him to. 



244 TALKS WITH T. R. 

"I must tell his mother," he said. 

A few minutes later he gave to Thompson the won- 
derful comment, expressing the joy of Quentin's 
parents that he had had his chance to do his bit 
before he was called to go. 

The next day the Colonel kept an engagement to 
speak at the Republican Convention in Saratoga. 

" It is my duty to go there," he said. 

To the stranger Colonel Roosevelt gave no sign 
of his bitter affliction. Those who knew him best saw, 
however, that the blow had slowed him down. Not 
that he paraded his grief — even to them. That grief 
was a secret, sacred thing — to be exhibited to none. 

Not long after, Captain Archie, crippled in arm 
and leg, came home. His coming gave the Colonel 
relief, for the young man was in much better shape 
than had been anticipated, and the doctors were 
strong in assurances that his recovery would be 
nearly if not quite complete. When he was well 
enough to leave the hospital, he and the Colonel 
"chummed" about town and Oyster Bay. 

"Colonel," I said in the Harvard Club one day, 
"Archie is making splendid progress. I just saw him 
running down the street. He runs as well as any boy. 
I congratulate you." 

"Thank you, Jack," he replied. "The surgeons 
are working wonders. In the early days of the war 




COLONEL ROOSEVELT AND DR. MASON EXAMINING SHRAPNEL 
WHICH WOUNDED ARCHIE ROOSEVELT 



HIS BOYS' CRITICS 245 

he'd have lost arm and leg if not his Hfe. As it is, 
he 's coming around splendidly. 

"And Ted — I Ve just had a letter from a regular 
army officer who says Ted's as good an officer as 
there is in the regular establishment. He 's been made 
a lieutenant-colonel, you know. Is n't that fine? And 
Kermit's doing well too." 

But the dead boy — the eagle whose fall had hurt 
him to the heart — he did not mention. 



OUR SOLDIER DEAD IN FRANCE 

EARLY in 191 8 Colonel Roosevelt anticipated 
propaganda after the war might cease for the 
return of the bodies of American soldiers who died 
in France. The idea did not appeal to him, any more 
than did the policy of the quartermaster's depart- 
ment of the army in using valuable cargo space to 
send cojffins abroad to the exclusion of other articles. 

"They are," said he, "sending coffins over, though 
they are short of shoes. They have sent twenty thou- 
sand over. It is all very well to show respect for the 
dead, but it would be far better to care for the boys 
while they are alive. This cargo space should have 
been used for shoes and other supplies. I know they 
are short of shoes for I have helped provide fifteen 
hundred pair myself, for men who have had no shoes 
issued to them since August. 

"This shipping of coffins is part of a general 
scheme to send all our dead home, paving a way for 
a demand after the war that this be done. It will not 
be practical, but there probably will be an attempt 
to play on the heart-strings of relatives. This is prob- 
ably not in the minds of whoever is responsible for 
sending these boxes over now — somebody is prob- 



OUR SOLDIER DEAD IN FRANCE 247 

ably following some musty rule in the department — 
but that will be the effect. 

''If any of mine are killed over there, I shall op- 
pose disturbing their graves when peace comes. They 
should rest, and if I have anything to say about it, 
they will rest, where they may fall." 

Months after, Quentin, the Eagle, fell. Not long 
after his death — about three months — I was 
asked to give my associates a letter the Colonel had 
addressed to Major-General Crowder requesting in 
the name of Mrs. Roosevelt and himself that the 
body not be sent home. It was in this letter, 
prompted by a Washington despatch to the effect 
that all bodies were to be returned, that he quoted 
the line: "Where the tree falls, there let it lie." 

The correspondence attracted a great deal of 
attention. Most of it that came to my notice was 
favorable to the position he had taken, and I told 
him so. 

"It is the course I believe sensible people gener- 
ally will approve of," he said. "To me it is painful 
to think that long after death the poor broken body 
would be taken from what should be its resting-place, 
and moved thousands of miles. To me it does not 
seem fitting. Nor does it seem desirable to reopen old 
wounds of the living. These will never fully heal, they 
will always hurt, but they should not be torn open. 



248 TALKS WITH T. R. 

"I know that many good people who have lost 
sons and brothers and husbands will not agree with 
Mrs. Roosevelt and me. I understand their position 
and respect their feelings. But I am very much afraid 
others will not, and will try to play upon those feel- 
ings for profit in one form or another. 

"It was to help these good people and others who 
may be wavering that I asked you to make public 
my wishes in so far as our boy's body is concerned. 
I had thought my example might have some influ- 
ence in the matter, just as I feel that had Mrs. Roose- 
velt and I taken an opposite position, others would 
have very properly demanded like action in their 
own cases. 

"Personally, I am more concerned in the living 
than in the dead. We cannot forget our dead, but we 
must live for the living. We should insist on proper 
respect for our dead — France will see to that — 
and if we have any energy to expend, use it caring 
for the soldier who comes back maimed or for the 
dependents of those who do not come back at all. 

"Where the bodies are returned, if they are re- 
turned, there will be a lot of attention paid to the 
first returned. There will be public funerals. There 
will be calls on the purses of relatives, too poor to 
spare the money, for more elaborate stones than the 
Government will provide. Then for a time, while 



OUR SOLDIER DEAD IN FRANCE 249 

parents or wife lives, their graves will be well taken 
care of. After that — comparative neglect. You and 
I have seen that in the graves of soldiers of other 
wars — a little attention one day in the year, and 
no more. It is bound to work out that way as fam- 
ilies die out and move away. How different in the 
national cemeteries or in the soldiers' lots in our 
larger city cemeteries! 

"Crowder's letter shows what I expected, that in 
planning as it has the department is following rules 
laid down at the time of our war with Spain. In that 
war, and in the Philippine insurrection that followed, 
we lost fewer men than we have lost in a single day 
in this war. 

"I recall one after tragedy of the Philippines I 
was told about in a Western town. It was a small 
place, and one of the town boys was killed some- 
where in Luzon. His body was brought home and the 
townspeople spent several hundred dollars to erect 
a monument over his grave. When I was in the town 
I met his mother, whose support he had been. She 
was earning her living sewing. How much better it 
would have been if that boy's body were left where 
he fell, and the money spent on his monument spent 
on his mother! 

"It will be far better to leave our dead in great 
cemeteries over there, places like beautiful Arlington 



250 TALKS WITH T. R. 

or our other national cemeteries at home. There the 
graves will be well cared for, our dead will sleep, as 
I believe they would prefer, among their comrades, 
and these shrines will be, if I might use the expres- 
sion, not a link, but rivets in the chain that binds 
us to our allies, and our allies to us. 

"Rupert Brooke, you will remember, wrote that 
wherever his body might rest would forever be a bit 
of England. Just so, wherever our boys sleep will be 
forever American soil. They willed it so." 



MAKING PEACE WITH GOMPERS 

ALL the world knows that soon after the East 
, St. Louis race riots, Colonel Roosevelt and 
Samuel Gompers all but came to blows on the stage 
of Carnegie Hall, New York. Few, however, knew 
that at the time of Roosevelt's death he and Gom- 
pers were friends. 

They shook hands, so to speak, on the ques- 
tion of Americanism, Colonel Roosevelt making the 
advances. 

The peacemaking came about in this way. Gom- 
pers, at the American Federation of Labor Conven- 
tion of 191 7 in Buffalo, faced the fight of his life with 
pro-Germans and pacifists within the labor move- 
ment who hoped to put the Federation on record as 
opposing the War and the national programme for 
prosecuting it to a successful finish. Days before the 
convention met, "S.O.S." calls were flashing to all 
who might help hold the fort. Among those who 
responded, it will be recalled, was President Wilson, 
but even after his visit, the situation was tense up 
to the moment the convention adjourned. 

More than that, adjournment left all hands with 
a realizing sense that, however emphatic the defeat 
of the anti-war group had been, it was still an ele- 



252 TALKS WITH T. R. 

ment of great potential danger, and that the situa- 
tion was anything but pleasant from the standpoint 
of one hundred per cent Americanism. This I sought 
to make clear in a long report I submitted to Colonel 
Roosevelt at his request, accompanying it with an 
oral explanation. 

"Gompers," I told the Colonel, "has his back to 
the wall. He may need help, and need it badly, at 
any time." 

"But," said he, "he has been playing Wilson's 
game." 

" I know that," I replied, "but just now he's play- 
ing our game, the one hundred per cent American 
game. And he may need help." 

"What can I do to help?" he asked. 

"Not a thing now," I replied, "but the time may 
come later when you can help." 

"Very well. Does Gompers know you were to take 
this matter up with me? Have you discussed this 
matter with him?" 

I replied that I had not. 

"There was nothing I could say," I replied, "and 
no occasion for me to say anything, anyway." 

"All right," said the Colonel. "As you say, 
Gompers is playing a straight American game. In 
that he should have every help. I do not take back 
any word I have ever said about him, and I don't 



MAKING PEACE WITH GOMPERS 253 

care whether he takes back anything he has said 
about me or not. We can agree and do agree on 
Americanism. 

" Now, you go to him and say to him for me that 
if there is anything I can say or do to help him in this 
fight, to let me know, and I will do it. Make it clear 
to him that you have told me the kind of fight that 
is being made on him because of his Americanism, 
and say to him that whatever differences we may 
have had in the past or may have in the future, I am 
with him in this fight. It won't embarrass you to do 
that?" 

''Not at all," said I. "It is what I expected." 

"All right, go ahead. Now, make it clear to 
Gompers that it is not going to be necessary for him 
to come to me or to write to me. You can see where 
that might be impossible, might embarrass him. If 
he wishes to come, all right, let him come; but if he 
prefers, let him send any message he wishes through 
you or somebody else we both know and I will attend 
to the matter." 

It was ten days before I had an opportunity to 
deliver my message to Gompers, When I did deliver 
it, he was as pleased a man as I have ever seen. 

"Did Mr. Roosevelt really say that?" he inter- 
rupted, when I had given him but part of the mes- 
sage. 



254 TALKS WITH T. R. 

"He certainly did," I replied. "Furthermore, 
when you want him, write direct if you wish, or, if 
you prefer, send for me and I will arrange a meeting. 
If that is not advisable, send some one else the 
Colonel knows, or you may, if you wish, send any 
message through me. These are the Colonel's in- 
structions — he wants you to feel free to call on him 
for any help he may be able to give." 

"That certainly is very fine of the old man," said 
Gompers. "You may go to him and tell him for me 
that I thank him from the bottom of my heart, that 
I do appreciate his offer and why it is made and that 
I shall not forget his offer if the occasion requires. 
Is it all right to tell this to Perham?" 

Perham (H. B.), a vice-president of the A. F. of L. 
and chief of the Order of Railroad Telegraphers, was 
standing near. I saw no reason why he and others in 
Gompers's confidence should not be told, and said so. 

"The men on whom you rely to help you make 
your fight should know," I said. "The Colonel said 
nothing about secrecy, and would, I think, prefer 
that they should know." 

" Henry," called Gompers to Perham, " this young 
man has just given me a most pleasing message. 
Colonel Roosevelt offers any help he may be able to 
give in fighting these scoundrels; we're to call on 
him any time. Is n't that fine?" 



f 



MAKING PEACE WITH GOMPERS ass 

Perham, slow of speech, agreed that it was, 
adding: 

''But why should n't he? — you are both in the 
same fight." 

"Yes, Henry," said Gompers, "but you must 
remember Roosevelt and I have not been very 
friendly. You must know that men — and I include 
the big ones — do not always do exactly what they 
should do." 

So ended the Gompers-Roosevelt feud — if feud it 
could be called. 



HENRY FORD AND MARK HANNA 

MARK HANNA died long before Henry Ford 
arose above the horizon of obscurity. This 
did not prevent the Colonel from telling a Hanna 
story to illustrate an opinion he held of the man 
made famous and wealthy by the "flivver." 

*' Hanna," said the Colonel, "sent Bunau-Varilla, 
the French engineer, to see me about the Panama 
Canal. Later I saw Hanna and told him I could do 
nothing with the man. 

"'Why,' said I, 'that man would instruct Cos- 
mos.' 

"'Never mind Cosmos,' said Hanna. 'Cromwell's 
the man for you to listen to.' He meant William 
Nelson Cromwell, the New York lawyer. 

" Now Ford is a pretty good man for making cheap 
automobiles. He makes a good car for the money, 
and in his sphere has done a very good work. But he 
won't stick to his sphere. He would instruct Cosmos. 

"It would not be so bad if he knew anything about 
the matters outside of automobiles that he attempts 
to manage and direct. He does not seem to have the 
faintest idea of American history, or any history for 
that matter; he knows nothing of world politics, yet 
he sets himself up, with the aid of an army of press 



HENRY FORD AND MARK HANNA 257 

agents, as the man who must teach everybody. He 
has no conception of what we mean by Americanism 
and has an extreme idea of the importance and 
power of his money. He is ignorant, yet because he 
has been so successful in motors, many, many per- 
sons, hardly as ignorant as himself, think him wise 
in all things and allow him to influence their views. 

"Henry, like Barnum, has been a great advertiser. 
I do not say his peace ship was an advertising dodge 
— I will give him credit for being sincere there — 
but I won't say that he has not been given credit for 
a lot of philanthropy that was merely good business. 
Other of his schemes given much publicity are imag- 
inings that in others would attract no attention. 

"He and his son Edsoll make a precious pair. The 
exempting of that young man was a glaring bit of 
injustice. Had I had my way, he'd have gone into 
the trenches and taken his chances just as any poor 
man's son had to go and take his chances. Instead, 
he is safe in Detroit. Cases like his make fine material 
for demagogues who try to tell the ignorant this is a 
government for rich men. 

"Most rich men's sons are doing their duty. You 
see that around the clubs. The only young men you 
see there are in uniform. 

"By the way, I saw two things the other after- 
noon that made me proud of New York. I had been 



258 TALKS WITH T. R. 

up Westchester way. Motoring in, I saw a little 
service flag on a very poor house — more of a shack. 
A colored woman was in the doorway — it was ap- 
parently a negro home. Coming down the avenue 
I saw another little flag hanging out of the window 
of one of the finest houses in New York. It signified 
that its owner, one of America's wealthiest young 
men, had gone to the front and was doing his bit, 
man fashion, just as the colored lad out of that poor 
home was doing. 

"That kind of young man is worth a million 
Edsoll Fords in peace as well as in war, for the man 
who does his duty in war is not likely to shirk in 
peace." 

The Fifth Avenue home to which the Colonel re- 
ferred was that of Vincent Astor. 



A TRIBUTE TO NURSES 

MORE so than any other man I have ever 
known, Colonel Roosevelt was capable of 
adjusting himself to circumstances and seeing good 
in places where most humans would see naught of 
value. He was a philosopher at all times. 

When he was recovering from the serious opera- 
tion of February, 191 8, I commented on the fact 
that his surroundings in Roosevelt Hospital were 
comfortable. 

"Indeed they are," said he, "and every one here 
is splendid. It is almost worth while being sick to 
meet such people and realize the work that is done 
in such places. 

"Take the nurses — clean, healthy young women, 
full of animal life and youth and spirit, at just that 
age when they might be excused if their thoughts 
and their time were devoted to pleasure, in here 
doing the hardest kind of work, much of it unpleas- 
ant, nearly all of it depressing, not for pay, but be- 
cause they wish to be of service, to fit themselves 
for service. 

"Thank God, I'm not a cynic; I've always be- 
lieved in and respected American womanhood, but 
I tell you. Jack Leary, that I leave here with more 



26o TALKS WITH T. R. 

respect and a better appreciation of what our girls 
really are. We are all apt to take some things for 
granted. Most of us, until we are forced into a place 
like this, never give a thought to the women who 
give up so much to serve. 

"These girls here are all from good families. Some, 
I am told, are from what, for want of a better term, 
we call our best families. All have education enough 
to qualify in easier, pleasanter work, where hours 
are regular and there's ample time for theatres, par- 
ties, and all that sort of thing young folks love. They 
serve a hard apprenticeship and when they graduate, 
go out to do work that more often than not is as un- 
pleasant as any in the training period. They are not 
well paid, and are about as casual in their employ- 
ment, many of them, as a day laborer. I suppose I 
always knew that, but, as I have said, I took it for 
granted as we take many things, until I came in here 
and had a chance to think. Honestly I feel as though 
I had had a mental bath. 

"After what I Ve seen here I 'm tempted, the next 
time some half-baked jack of a preacher who cannot 
fill his church any other way cuts loose with an 
attack on American women, picturing them as brain- 
less butterflies with never a thought of anything but 
cocktails, cabarets, and dress, who are ' dooming the 
race ' — that 's one of their favorite declarations — 



A TRIBUTE TO NURSES a6i 

I 'm tempted to take him by the scruff of the neck 
and drop him in some first-class hospital. He'll leave 
with his soul cleaner and in better working order 
than when he entered ; that is, if he has a soul bigger 
than a mustard seed, and the girls won't be damaged 
any by his cluttering up the place for a few days. 

"You did not go to church to-day? I thought not. 
Well, there 's your sermon. — I 'm in a sermonizing 
mood to-day, so you see I am getting better. Seri- 
ously, though, it does one good to get down to brass 
tacks once in a while, and if any one ever asks you 
what I think of the nursing profession, you just tell 
them I said — no, they 're not angels, they are too 
practical for that, but trumps every one of them." 

The respect the Colonel had for the nurses was 
reciprocated. In his stays at Roosevelt Hospital on 
more than one occasion something as close to a row 
as one would expect in such a place developed over 
the question as to who should serve him. All agreed 
he was a model patient and good in obeying orders, 
except that he had all of a strong man's opposition 
to being "waited on." In his sickest hours he always 
insisted on trying to help himself. 

One dour member of Roosevelt's staff had rather 
an original way of explaining the Colonel's agility 
in obeying "orders." 

"The folks here do not give him orders," said this 



262 TALKS WITH T. R. 

surgeon. "They think they do. He's just come in, 
captivated everybody in the place, and comes pretty 
near to running things. It's what I suspect he does 
everywhere. Personally I '11 be glad when he gets out. 
Why? Because the nurses and some of the fool doc- 
tors here can then think of something beside Colonel 
Roosevelt." 



WOMAN IN OFFICE 

WHY not?" 
Colonel Roosevelt asked this question one 
day when a visitor jokingly remarked that in the 
event of his returning to the White House, he might 
have a woman private secretary. The woman in 
question was Miss Josephine M. Strieker, who be- 
came attached to his staff in the Bull Moose days 
and was his secretary to the end. 

"Miss Strieker is a perfectly good secretary," he 
went on. "She is competent, faithful, loyal. If she 
is to be criticized at all, it is because she tries to do 
too much herself. Should I by any chance return to 
the White House, I should be glad to have a secre- 
tary of her attainments. Some of the politicians 
might not like it, it might be somewhat embarrassing 
to them, and it would be a precedent, but I am sure 
that if I could stand it, and she could stand the poli- 
ticians, we are about the only persons who would 
have to be considered. 

"Come to think of it, is there any good or valid 
reason why women should not have many places we 
are apt to consider exclusive male property? To be 
sure, Jeannette Rankin has shown a lack of some 
things to be desired in a member of Congress, but 



264 TALKS WITH T. R. 

have all the male members been so good? I think 
not. Now that women are getting the ballot, we must 
be prepared to see them in many offices hitherto 
barred to them. Not a few of the most successful 
men I have known in public life owe their success 
very largely to the political sense of their wives. 
Take Blank. He is a nice fellow, and I like him, but 
I would give more for the opinion of his wife on a 
matter of practical politics than I would for his. It 
comes natural to her — she is her father's daughter. 
Without her, I doubt very much if her husband 
would have gone as far as he has. With her, he may 
go farther. 

"I mention this couple because you know all 
about them. Another man I won't name had a repu- 
tation for real conservatism. He was as conservative 
as Senator Allison. You remember that Allison sheep 
story — where some one remarked that a flock 
seemed to be closely sheared, and he is said to have 
answered, *It appears so from this side.' The man I 
have in mind was even more conservative at times. 
He always asked time to think a thing over. It did 
not take me long to discover that if the thing was 
of any earthly consequence, he wished time to talk 
it over with his maiden sister — a lady of the New 
England schoolma'am type. 

" I am not sure that any of us would care to see 



WOMAN IN OFFICE 265 

women in all public tasks — I can think of some 
that I would dislike seeing any woman in — but any 
place she can fill as well as the average man she is 
entitled to. Therefore, to revert, I see no reason 
why, if I were again in the White House, Miss 
Strieker would not be a very capable successor to 
the Honorable Joseph Patrick Tumulty." 

When he was about to leave the hospital after the 
serious operation in February, 19 18, I spoke of the 
good work done by Miss Strieker while he was so ill. 
"Mrs. Roosevelt may tell you of this," I added, 
"but there are lots of things she has not known 
about, I imagine." 

"Miss Strieker is a trump — a splendid woman 
and an excellent secretary. Her handling of various 
matters that have arisen since I came here and when 
she had to depend on her own judgment has been 
splendid — she has been very tactful in some very 
delicate matters. I know that some of my friends do 
not exactly swear by her — they may swear at her 
behind her back — but that can make no difference 
with me. 

"They dislike her because she is too faithful to 
me to please them. Any good secretary comes in 
for that sort of thing. Take Loeb. He was devoted 
to me and never considered himself. He was thor- 
oughly disliked by many persons just because he 



266 TALKS WITH T. R. 

did as I told him. He made good as secretary just as 
he made good as collector [of the port of New York] 
and as he is making good in business. 

"Loeb is going to be a very wealthy man some 
one of these days, and he deserves to be, for he is 
honest and a hard worker. 

"You do not know Loeb very well? I want you 
to get acquainted with him — you '11 like him, and 
you'll find you have many things in common. He's 
a capital fellow." 



THE NEW YORK FIGHT OF 1918 

HAD Colonel Roosevelt so chosen, he would 
have ended his days in the Executive Mansion 
in Albany. In the fall of 191 8 leaders of a powerful 
faction in the party used every possible argument 
and influence to induce him to stand against Charles 
S. Whitman for the Republican nomination. 

They believed, and privately the Whitman leaders 
agreed with them, that they could stampede the 
convention for "T. R." if he would only say the 
word. On the other hand, Whitman's lieutenants 
used every bit of influence they could command to 
induce him to declare for their man. They were as 
unsuccessful as the anti-Whitmanites. 

" I shall support whoever is nominated, " was the 
best either side could get from him. 

"I will not," he declared to me as to others, "be 
used by Whitman, and I will not allow Whitman's 
foes to use me as a club on him or to drag any of their 
chestnuts out of the fire. I shall not interfere in the 
New York fight or be a candidate for Governor. 

" It is a fight within the party for the members of 
the party to settle between themselves. They and 
the party will be the better off for settling it. I do 
not know that I could settle it, but if I did, it would 



268 TALKS WITH T. R. 

leave soreness and ill-feeling and put me in a posi- 
tion I will not take — that of a State boss. 

"I have no delusions about Whitman. Neither 
have I any delusions as to Mr. Barnes and some 
others who are fighting him. There is no call for me 
to interfere, and I shall not interfere. 

"Believe me, I realize that it is not love for 
Roosevelt that prompts Whitman's party to praise 
me. I am too old a bird to be deceived on this point. 
They talk of me for Governor, not because they 
want me, but because they want to kill off Whitman. 

"They won't use me as a blackjack." 

The effort to induce Colonel Roosevelt to run for 
Governor was not the only attempt made to use him 
in New York politics in the last years of his life. An 
earlier move was in the form of a bill making him 
food controller of the State. The day this move be- 
came public. Colonel Roosevelt called me to his 
office to say he would not for a moment consider it. 

"I shall," said he, "have something to say later 
in the day. Be at the Union League at five. If you 
wish, bring one or two of the boys along." 

The late N. A. Jennings was the only man of those 
close to the Colonel I could reach. When we arrived 
he had a statement ready. 

"I have," said he, "tried to be fair to Whitman 
by emphasizing the fact that the Governor should 



THE NEW YORK FIGHT OF 1918 269 

be free to make appointments. I have been Governor 
and I know what that means. 

"Furthermore, I am not the man for the place. 
I know my Hmitations. And if I were, I would not 
allow myself to be switched on to a side track at this 
time. The main thing is to get troops over, to speed 
up the work, to wake up the country. Food is im- 
portant, it is extremely important, but there are 
men who can do this work better than I can and I 
am going to let some one of them do it. 

" I am very much out of patience with those cheer- 
ful souls who keep crying, 'Food will win the war.' 
The war will be won by the men with guns in their 
hands. 

"I have said all this, though not in those words, 
in this statement. I don't believe you can read my 
writing, so I '11 read it to you. 

"You will see," he declared, as he finished reading, 
"that the real value of this move is that it gives me 
the opportunity to once more hammer on the need 
of full, absolute, and complete preparedness." 



I 



HOME FOLK 

THERE are many things in Oyster Bay that I 
would Hke to see changed, but I cannot well do 
anything. If I interfered, many would not like it. 
You see there are some persons in this world who 
resent being reformed, even by an ex- President of 
the United States." 

Colonel Roosevelt was talking of his relations with 
the people of Oyster Bay. 

These relations were unique and not readily under- 
stood by the visitor, who often was surprised to hear 
a resident speak unkindly of the town's leading citi- 
zen. At bottom all liked the Colonel and appreci- 
ated what he had done for the town; though many 
resented the thought that Oyster Bay's sole reason 
for existence was the need of some place where news 
despatches having to do with Colonel Roosevelt 
might be dated. 

The entire truth, I think, is that Roosevelt was 
not really understood by the town folks. Some re- 
sented the fact that only a few of their number ever 
were asked to Sagamore Hill, where Roosevelt's life, 
while simple, was essentially that of the Lord of the 
Manor. They felt that it was in many ways a world 



HOME FOLK 271 

apart, and that the great and important who visited 
Sagamore Hill were not their kind. 

On the other hand, they would have very strongly 
resented any change. Were they made welcome at 
any and all times, they would have felt that "T. R.," 
as they invariably called him, would be patronizing 
them. It was this the Colonel had in mind when he 
said he was careful not to interfere in town affairs. 

"One trouble here," he said, discussing Oyster 
Bay and his life there, "is that when there is some- 
thing worth while here you do not report it. Your 
papers would not print it if you did, I suppose. It 
would not be news. 

"Take the Christmas exercises at the Cove School. 
For over thirty years I have been the Santa Claus 
there. It began when — no, before — my children 
started to school. Mrs. Roosevelt for years bought 
the presents after consultation with the teachers, 
and learning just what each child wished or should 
have. I remember she always used to buy at Bloom- 
ingdale's because she could get the best value for the 
money. Of late years she has not been able to do the 
shopping and the teachers have done that work. 

"The celebration is a movable feast, usually fixed 
after considerable discussion with the teachers. I 
have been there whenever I could. I always have 
tried to spend Christmas here at home. Sometimes 



272 TALKS WITH T. R. 

when I was President I could not come, but I was 
here when I could. It is the usual school celebration 
— carols, 'curfew shall not ring to-night,' addresses 
by myself and other leading citizens — you know 
what I mean. And of course I have a word for every- 
body. The occasion would be entirely lost if the little 
red heads of one family were not appropriately 
recognized. 

"It's a good school and democratic. There is one 
negro family here that sends its children there. Ted 
at one time shared a desk with one of them. If that 
were only known in the South, it would damn me for- 
ever. But that would not be news, that celebration." 

The one person in Oyster Bay who, above all 
others, voiced his disapproval of the Colonel was 
Disbrow, the local editor. His was a Democratic 
sheet (it still is, I believe), and Disbrow seemed to 
feel it incumbent upon him to speak as an individual 
as strongly as he did when he used the editorial 
"we." He particularly resented the fact that prac- 
tically every news item from Oyster Bay in the 
New York papers referred in some way to the 
Colonel or his family — a state of affairs he consid- 
ered most unjust. 

How to change things he and others who felt as 
he did did not know until after Judge Hughes had 
been favored over the Colonel by the Republican 



HOME FOLK 273 

Convention. Then it occurred to Disbrow and others 
that a big Independence Day celebration, with a 
parade, a firemen's muster, and other trimmings, 
would for once, at least, result in something other 
than Roosevelt matter being printed as coming from 
the Bay. 

"This man up on the hill is all through," said Dis- 
brow. "The King is dead. We'll have a celebration 
that will show folks there's something to Oyster 
Bay but Roosevelt." 

Frederic R. Coudert was selected as orator of the 
day, and everything arranged, even to having the 
Colonel sit in the grandstand, as a sort of Exhibit A. 
The Colonel, who had an inkling of the motive back 
of the celebration, agreed to attend on the distinct 
understanding that he was not to be asked to speak 
by the committee or the chairman. 

When the day came around, a really creditable 
parade was held, the town was prettily decorated, 
and half of Long Island was on hand when Mr. 
Coudert began to speak. So was a detail of blue- 
jackets from a warship, stationed in the Bay for the 
occasion, a battery of moving-picture men, and the 
usual group of New York reporters. Mr. Coudert, 
always a good speaker, was at his best, and every- 
thing from Disbrow's standpoint was lovely until 
he was about to conclude. 



274 TALKS WITH T. R. 

"However," he said, "I am sure you have heard 
enough from me. There 's another here you 'd prefer 
to hear from, and as I 'm bound by no gentleman's 
agreement, I present to you your fellow townsman, 
Colonel Roosevelt." 

Instantly, the picture changed. The "corpus de- 
lictu" that was came to life with a crashing, patri- 
otic speech, winding up by inviting the bluejackets 
and their officers to partake of his hospitality at 
Sagamore Hill, and departed. Next morning Oyster 
Bay was on the front pages of half the papers of the 
country, with Mr. Hughes receiving scant room in- 
side. Mr. Coudert was mentioned as having "also 
spoke," and the parade was given notice in passing. 

"Huh," said Maury Townsend, last of the oldest 
families, next day when asked what he thought of 
the denouement. "What did they expect? First 
thing any one about here knows some people we 
know will be scheming to keep squirrels on the 
ground." 



m 



THE VALUE OF MASONRY 

COLONEL ROOSEVELT was a Mason, and in 
a quiet way an enthusiastic one. He was a fre- 
quent attendant at Matinecock Lodge in Oyster 
Bay in which he was raised, and when in foreign 
parts, particularly in out-of-the-way places, made it 
a rule, when possible, to visit the local lodges. He 
was as thorough in his Masonry as he was in other 
things, as witness Harry Russell, well known in the 
craft, who assisted in his initiation. 

"When," says Russell, "the Colonel came up for 
examination he was letter perfect — hanged if he 
did not have the work better than his conductor, for 
he corrected him in an error." 

Talking of Oyster Bay affairs at his home one 
afternoon the Colonel touched on this phase of his 
activities. 

"As you know," he said, turning to me, "I am a 
member of the local lodge of Masons. You also know, 
brother, I violate no secret when I say that one of 
the greatest values in Masonry is that it affords an 
opportunity for men in all walks of life to meet on 
common ground, where for the time all men are 
equal and have one common interest. 



276 TALKS WITH T. R. 

"For example, when I was President, the master 
was Worshipful Brother Doughty, gardener on the 
estate of one of my neighbors, and a most excellent 
public-spirited citizen, with whom I liked to main- 
tain contact. Clearly I could not call upon him when 
I came home. It would have embarrassed him. 
Neither could he, without embarrassment, call on 
me. In the lodge it was different. He was over me, 
though I was President, and it was good for him and 
good for me. 

" I go to the lodge, and even the folks who do not 
belong to or believe in the order, rather like it that I 
should go. They seem to feel it 's part of the eternal 
fitness of things. Whenever I return from one of my 
journeys I always go there to tell of the lodges I 
have visited, in Nairobi in Africa, in Trinidad, or the 
quaint little lodge I found away up on the Ascunsion 
River. They sort of feel I am their representative to 
these lodges, and they like it. There's a real com- 
munity of interest. 

"It's the same way with Mrs. Roosevelt. She is 
an Episcopalian, you know, and belongs to a guild 
named after a saint — Saint Hilda, I believe. She 
frequently has the members here. She had them at 
the White House on several occasions. There's no 
social rank in the guild, no distinction — the brake- 
man's wife or the butcher's wife, the equal of her 



THE VALUE OF MASONRY 277 

neighbor, and all are comfortable. You see, they 
have a common interest. 

"That is the way to make people work together. 
Get them on common ground, get them together 
through some interest in common. There social lines 
fade out and you get results." 



HITTING THE BACK TRAIL 

I HAVE no desire to return to the scenes of my 
ranching days. It's all changed — and I don't 
want to see it." 

I had asked the Colonel if he ever longed to retrace 
his steps through the ranch country he had known 
as a young man. 

"It is a mistake, I think, for one to hit the back 
trail after many years have passed. One finds things 
changed, the old picture is destroyed, the romance 
gone. I was back in the old country once. I saw only 
a little of it, but that was enough. Why there was a 
store down where we had the clash with the Indians! 

"The place is all settled now. The folks there are 
largely of foreign stock, good people and good citi- 
zens, who lead most matter-of-fact lives. It is best 
that it should be so, but I don't wish to see the place 
again. I 'd rather try and remember it as it was. 

" Change, of course, is the rule of all new countries. 
I imagine that thirty or forty years from now the 
jungle I hunted over in Africa may be quite settled 
and as safe as Upper Harlem. This will not be true of 
the Amazon. A great many years must elapse before 
that country is little more than a poorly charted 
wilderness. It is not attractive to the white man. 



HITTING THE BACK TRAIL 279 

"Africa, on the other hand, is. For that reason, it 
will be comparatively developed when the Amazon 
country is still raw. 

" I shall revisit neither place. I have done my bit. 
Those who come after me must do theirs. Anyway, 
I've no desire to hit the back trail. As a rule, it's 
not profitable." 



ON HEREDITY 

ONCE, when Colonel Roosevelt declared that 
Richard Derby (now Colonel), who married 
his youngest daughter, Ethel, was "a fine fellow" of 
whom he was "as proud as I am of my blood sons," 
I remarked that Dr. Derby came from a splendid 
family — the Derbys of old Salem, in Massachusetts. 

"Yes, I know," he replied; "it is as you say, a 
splendid family. I do not care what any man says, 
and I 'm no ancestor worshipper either, blood will 
tell in a man, a horse, or a dog. In either case you 
will have culls at times and throw-backs, but in the 
long run and on the average you will find the blooded 
animal wins. 

"Take our immigrant stock. You will find, I am 
sure, if you could go back into the history of the 
immigrant that rises above his fellows, that back of 
him there was some superior stock; that a father, 
grandfather, or some remote ancestor was eminent 
above his fellows in the home land, wherever that 
might have been. 

" It is so with our American negroes. Take my boy, 
Charlie Lee, for example. Charlie came to me from 
Captain Fitzhugh Lee, whose boy he had been. 
Charlie is a first-class citizen, careful, industrious, 



ON HEREDITY 281 

cleanly, thrifty — a better man than the average 
run of whites. Charlie's father was General Robert 
E. Lee's body servant; Charlie takes his name from 
the Lee family. The father was a superior negro. 
Doubtless if we could go back, we'd find that his 
father's father, and beyond, were well above the 
average of slaves. 

"Charlie inherits his good points from his parents, 
from those people I 've been talking about. He is as 
loyal as a bulldog, perfectly attached to the family 
and devoted to the children. If it was the life of any 
one of them or Charlie's, Charlie would not hesitate 
one second. If he were lucky enough to escape him- 
self, he would not think he had done anything out 
of the ordinary, and he would probably resent being 
told that he had." 

Charlie had an equally high opinion of his adored 
Colonel. 

"Colonel Roosevelt has been splendid to me," he 
said one day. "He's more like a father to us all than 
an employer. You just be up at the house if one of 
those Irish girls is sick! The Colonel and Mrs. Roose- 
velt are just as worried as though she was one of the 
children and she would n't get any better care if she 
was one of the children. 

"But," laughed Charlie at the conclusion of this 
— for him — very long speech, "what's the use of 



282 TALKS WITH T. R. 

talking? Quality folks are quality folks wherever you 
find them." 

The Colonel grinned when I one day repeated 
Charlie's speech to him. 

"It's about what you should expect of Charlie," 
said he. " If he were to leave me for any reason, you 
would find him looking about for some family he felt 
he could with honor attach himself to and he 'd serve 
it as loyally and as proudly as he now serves mine. 
Mere money would not get him if what he terms 
'quality' were not there. And if I make myself clear, 
Charlie would honor any family he might go with. 
If I did not know anything else about it, the fact 
that Charlie had put his O.K. on it would tell me 
its members were worth-while people. 

"But Charlie won't go. He'll stay with Mrs. 
Roosevelt and me as long as we live, and then, in all 
probability, go with one of the children. It will be 
one of those things everybody will take for granted 
— Charlie's going with Ted or Ethel or one of the 
others." 



ON REMEMBERING FRIEND AND FOE 

IT was no part of Colonel Roosevelt's philosophy 
to turn the other cheek to the smiter. On the 
contrary, he very much favored payment in kind — 
if the party of the other part was worthy of atten- 
tion. 

In a word, his philosophy forbade him to forget 
friends or foes, and it was his regret that he had not 
had time to attend to all of the latter. 

This I learned one day when meeting him at the 
Grand Central Terminal he invited me to ride up- 
town with him. 

" I have something to tell you," he said. " I wanted 
you to know that I have just given Julian Street 
a statement for use in Collier s endorsing Purroy 
Mitchel for reelection. I thought you would be glad 
to know it." 

"On the contrary, I am sorry," I replied. 

"Why?" 

"First, because you are binding yourself to a sure 
loser, and I don't like to see you with a loser. Second, 
and less important, I cannot be with you on this." 

"You surprise me," said the Colonel. "Why can't 
you be with me?" 

"Colonel," I replied, "I am sorry. If this were 



284 TALKS WITH T. R. 

anything to you personally, I 'd follow you anywhere, 
but it is n't. On the other hand, this man and I are 
not friends, for he went out of his way to try and do 
me an injury. No man of his position can do that to 
me. A little fellow I 'd ignore, but a man in his high 
position I won't." 

"What did he do?" asked the Colonel. 

I explained at some length, concluding by saying 
that I would not have cared much had the man not 
rewarded my taking much trouble to play square 
with him by misrepresenting my position. 

"I can't forget that sort of thing," I said, just 
a wee bit fearful that my defection might offend 
him. 

"Jack," he said, hitting his right fist in his left 
palm, "you are absolutely right, absolutely right. 
A man has no more right to forget an enemy than 
he has to forget a friend. 

"God knows," he went on after a pause, " I have 
always tried to do something for ever>'body who 
ever did anything for me, and I have been fortunate 
in that I have usually been successful in this re- 
spect, but the regret of my life is that I have been 
unable to take proper care of all my enemies — I 
have had a million of them, too many of them for 
any man, however lucky, to attend to in an ordinary 
lifetime." 



ON REMEMBERING FRIEND AND FOE 285 

Every word the Colonel bit off short in the way 
peculiar to him. 

" I take an effort to do me a kindness as an obliga- 
tion, and an injury or a thing that might naturally 
be expected to injure as an obligation. No man can 
in justice to himself forget friend or foe. In a public 
exigency one should for the moment forget a personal 
injury if so doing would let him work with the other 
person in the public interest, that as a matter of 
public duty, but only as a public duty. 

"By this I do not mean that one should sit and 
nurse his wounds all the time. Not at all. But I'll 
pardon him if he remembers his scars when oppor- 
tunity offers." 

Colonel Roosevelt was himself the most punctili- 
ous of men in recognizing the claims of others upon 
him. For this reason, if no other, not every one could 
do him a favor. 

" I am," he remarked whimsically one day, "a bit 
particular in the matter of receiving favors. If a man 
does anything for you, you are bound, if you can, to 
do something for him when occasion offers. If it hap- 
pens to be the right sort of a man, it won't matter 
much, but with the other kind it can be very, very 
embarrassing. It's not everybody I care to be under 
obligation to." 

The Colonel not long after this practised what he 



286 TALKS WITH T. R. 

preached. In a matter that was of grave importance 
to him, a poHtician whose standards were not of the 
highest, but who was in a position to assist, offered 
his aid. 

" I shall have to decline with thanks," said he. " If 
I allow him to do anything for me, I shall have to do 
something for him later on. He knows that as well 
as I do, and I am simply not going to be under any 
obligation to him. He's not the kind I want to be 
beholden to. 

"A man should be as careful in accepting favors 
as he should be in making promises. If he's careless 
in either, he soon finds he's in trouble of one sort or 
another. There's where many a man in politics has 
wrecked himself, exactly as men in business have 
gone bankrupt endorsing notes for friends." 



"WELL-MEANING FOOLS" 

IF they ever get Mr. Wilson out here, I hope 
they'll bar that trick. It's pretty, but it affords 
the best cover for evil-minded persons I have ever 
seen. A man with a bomb could not ask a better 
opportunity." 

Colonel Roosevelt was referring to a feature of 
his reception in Springfield, Ohio, that, pretty as 
any picture, he did not exactly like. It was a shower 
of peonies aimed at the stage as he made his appear- 
ance. 

Near Springfield is a famous peony nursery. 
From it bulbs are shipped all over the world. For 
the blooms of its forty thousand plants there is a 
rather limited market, so once a year there is 
"peony day" when the flowers are sold about the 
streets for the benefit of the Red Cross or some 
other charity. On the occasion of the Colonel's visit 
there was a "war-chest" drive on, so the blooms 
were given away, and some one conceived the idea 
of giving him "a shower" when he reached the 
auditorium. 

This building was filled to capacity when he ar- 
rived. Each of the three thousand or more who had 
jammed their way in had at least one peony blossom; 



288 TALKS WITH T. R. 

most of them had several. As he appeared emerging 
from the wings, the audience arose and began hurl- 
ing the great, luscious blooms at the stage. For a few 
minutes the air was full of them, the hall looking for 
all the world as though an army had taken to hurl- 
ing snowballs. While it lasted. Colonel Roosevelt 
held his place in the entrance. From my seat I could 
see his jaw set, and his head half shake. It was clear 
he did not exactly approve of the demonstration. 

"Was n't that flower thing in the hall a fool af- 
fair?" he asked that evening. 

I agreed that it was, adding that it was very pretty 
and that those responsible meant well. 

"Exactly," said he. "They meant well. But I 
have found that one of the real dangers of life are 
people who mean well. You never can tell what they 
will do. You can tell, or at least be on guard against 
those who do not mean well. Some of the greatest 
embarrassments of my life have been caused by 
people with the best of intentions that 'did not 
know it was loaded.' 

"I am not afraid of the crook who means evil. I 
can usually take care of him or guard against him. 
But the well-meaning fool — no man can guard 
against him or his embarrassments." 



ON COLLEGE LIFE 

THE two classes of college boys who get the 
least out of college life are those who have no 
money and those who have too much. Neither pov- 
erty nor great riches are desirable for the boy in 
college." 

Colonel Roosevelt had asked my plans for my boy, 
and I had told him I meant to send him to Harvard 
"if I had the necessary funds." 

" It does not," said he, "require very much money 
to send a boy through Harvard or for that matter 
Yale or any of the big schools. The fact is that the 
boy who has too much money in college is just as 
badly off as the poor fellow who has none. I have 
every sympathy with the boy who works his way 
through college, but I realize that the poor fellow 
who has to divide his time between work, classroom, 
and study does not begin to get all a man should get 
out of college. He does not get the real spirit of the 
university, and he may come out with a mass of un- 
digested knowledge, worn physically and mentally 
and a narrow man. He'd have done as well in many 
cases working at some trade and devoting his spare 
time to a public library. 

"On the other hand, the boy who has unlimited 



290 TALKS WITH T. R. 

money has unlimited opportunities to spend it, to 
get into trouble and acquire habits that will be a 
handicap in later life. With the aid of tutors he gets 
his degree, and leaves college just as the extremely 
poor boy without having gotten the real benefit of 
the college. Both have been in but not of the college. 

"Unlike either of these, the boy of moderate 
means, enough to permit him to take a real part in 
all college activities, but not enough to permit or 
induce extravagance, gets about everything there is 
to be had. They are the men who really benefit by 
college. 

"It does not hurt a boy to have to do some work 
— • some of the best men I have known have had to 
do some work while in college — but the fellow who 
has all work and no time for the lighter activities is 
unfortunate. He would do better to delay his en- 
trance until he could accumulate enough funds to 
make his stay in the school less of a constant drill. 

"That, I know, is not quite so romantic, but it is 
eminently more practical. 

"However, one can never tell how a university 
man will turn out or what a university will turn out. 
Just now the two most eminent of the alumni of my 
college are Boies Penrose and Bill Barnes." 






ON PROHIBITION 

COLONEL ROOSEVELT was not of those who 
favored the Eighteenth Amendment to the 
Constitution prohibiting the manufacture, importa- 
tion, or sale of intoxicating liquors. To his mind 
prohibition was certain to cause unrest and dissatis- 
faction; he doubted the fairness of removing the 
saloon without providing something to take its place 
in the life of the tenement-dwellers; and he was in- 
clined to think the liquor question was settling itself. 

"You and I can readily recall the time," he said 
to me one day, "when it was not bad form for sub- 
stantial men of affairs, for lawyers, doctors — pro- 
fessional men generally — to drink in the middle of 
the day. It is good form no longer, and it's not now 
done. It is not so long ago that practically every man 
in politics drank more or less, when hard drinking, 
if not the rule, was not the exception. Now the hard 
drinker, if he exists at all among the higher grade, is 
a survival of what you might call another day. 

"Take Tammany. No one holds that up as an 
organization of model men, yet I am sure that were 
you to make a canvass of its district leaders, you 
would find pretty close to a majority if not an actual 
majority are teetotallers. Tammany no longer sends 



292 TALKS WITH T. R. 

men with ability, and a weakness for liquor, to 
Albany. It may and it probably will send another of 
Tom Grady's ability, but it will not send one who 
drinks as hard. 

"This, you may rest assured, is not a matter of 
morals. It is, however, a matter of efficiency. Tam- 
many wants results and it is sufficiently abreast of 
the times to know that drink and efficiency do not 
go hand in hand in these days of card indexes and 
adding machines. 

"It is the same in your profession. Not long ago 
most of the boys were fairly competent drinking men ; 
some I knew were rated as extra competent by ad- 
miring, perhaps envious, colleagues. Now the drink- 
ing man, at least the man who drinks enough to show 
the effects, is rare. The reason: your editors won't 
stand for it. As Jack Slaght put it the other day — I 
think it was Jack — a reporter in the old days was 
expected to have 'a birthday' about so often and 
nothing was thought of it. Now, as Slaght puts it, 
he is allowed but two. The first time, still quoting 
your friend Slaght, who at times is inclined to use 
plain language, he gets hell; the next time he gets 
fired. That is so, is it not?" 

I assured him that Slaght was substantially cor- 
rect. 

"It's not a matter of morals there, though" (with 



I 



I 



ON PROHIBITION 293 

a laugh). " I will admit you boys do not lack morals. 
As with Tammany, it is a question of getting results, 
exactly as it is with the doctor, the lawyer, and the 
judge. 

''Drinking declined once it became an economic 
question, or at least as soon as it was recognized as 
an economic factor. It then began to be unfashion- 
able — at least to over-drink — and the man who 
never drank at all ceased to be unusual in any trade 
or calling. 

" I am, however, sorry that they are pressing pro- 
hibition so hard at this time. It is, I think, all right, 
desirable, in fact, to limit or perhaps prohibit the 
so-called hard liquors, but it is a mistake, I think, 
to stop or try to stop the use of beers and the lighter 
wines. 

" If this thing goes through, where does the social 
side of life come in? We both know that a 'dry* din- 
ner is apt to be a sad sort of affair. It will make 
dining a lost art. 

"Likewise, I do not know how the working-classes 
will take to the change. You and I have no need of 
the saloon. We have other places to go. But you and 
I know that the saloon fits into a very definite place 
in the life of the tenement-dweller. I do not know 
what he will do without it; what substitutes the re- 
formers think they can give him for it. I do not be- 



294 TALKS WITH T. R. 

lieve they have thought of that, or that they care 
much. 

"Frankly, I do not know what will be the outcome. 
Prohibition, if it comes, will cause ill-feeling and un- 
rest — it will be a disturbing factor — but I do not 
look for anything really serious, for after all is said 
and done, the fact remains that the American work- 
man is a law-abiding individual. 

"When it comes, prohibition may or may not be 
permanent. You may, however, be sure of one thing 
— it will be extremely difficult to repeal, once it 
becomes part of the Constitution." 

Responsibility for prohibition Colonel Roosevelt 
placed squarely upon the shoulders of the liquor 
dealers good and bad. 

"Some liquor dealers I have known," said he, 
"were good, well-meaning citizens, who kept decent 
places. Take the Oakeses, father and son, who own 
the Oyster Bay Inn. I should be very sorry to see 
them lose their license. Theirs is a clean, respectable 
place. Again, there is John Brosnan's place in New 
York. No one ever heard a complaint against John. 
His place has been no more offensive than if he sold 
dry goods. 

"But the John Brosnans are responsible for the 
plight they now find themselves in, because they 
have stood neutral when they did not fight to save 



p 



ON PROHIBITION 295 

men who ran dives. Had the Brosnans and Oakeses 
and men of their stamp Hned up with decent citizens 
in closing up dives, they would have served the com- 
munity and themselves. However, they did not, and 
the situation is as it is. 

" I shall take no part in the contest one way or the 
other. It must be settled without me. I shall not 
allow it or anything else to swerve me from the work 
we're now in." 

The "work we're now in" was the effort to speed 
up the war by arousing the American people to the 
necessity of winning a "peace with victory." 



PERSHING AND WOOD 

ONE thing which annoyed Colonel Roosevelt 
was the public's persistence in believing that 
it was to him that General Leonard Wood owed his 
big jump in the army; in a word, to its confounding 
the case of Wood with that of Pershing. 

"The man they are thinking of," he used to say, 
"is Pershing. It was he I jumped over the heads of 
several hundred other army officers. I 'd do it again, 
by thunder, if the same occasion arose ! Wood got his 
big jump from McKinley, and all I ever gave him 
were the promotions due him in the usual course of 
seniority. I've tried a hundred times to straighten 
this out In the public mind, but I don't suppose I '11 
ever succeed. The public seems to wish to believe 
this myth. 

"President McKinley gave Wood his big jump In 
the regular establishment, after he took him out of 
the Rough Riders. I gave Pershing his big jump long 
after I had succeeded Mr. McKinley in the White 
House. 

"It came about In this way: Pershing was doing 
brilliant work In the Philippines. All the official re- 
ports showed him a man of energy and initiative, 
who could be depended upon to do what he was sent 



PERSHING AND WOOD 297 

to do, and about whom you did not have to worry. 
The unofficial reports that came back squared with 
all this. Both left no room for doubt as to the calibre 
and quality of the man. 

"Now about this time the line of promotion in 
the army became clogged. It needed new colonels 
and lieutenant-colonels, but the law would not per- 
mit the appointment of men immediately below these 
ranks that were of the quality needed. Congress 
would not change the law. 

*'I had, however, the right to appoint brigadier- 
generals. I made Pershing one. Therefore, you might 
say that Congress, by refusing me the right to make 
him a colonel or lieutenant-colonel, forced me to 
elevate him even higher. 

"Pershing at this time had one handicap. It was 
in the person of his esteemed father-in-law. Senator 
Warren of Wyoming, Chairman of the Committee 
on Military Affairs. To advance Pershing above his 
elders meant an invitation to charges of favoritism, 
or, as the army and navy sometimes put it, ' the three 
p's — politics, petticoats, and a pull.' Not to ad- 
vance him for this reason would have been cowardly 
and unfair. There was nothing for me to do but 
name him and let the heathen rage. 

"After I had done so, Warren came to me and 
thanked me. 



298 TALKS WITH T. R. 

"I said to him: 'Senator, I am very fond of you, 
but this appointment has not been made on your 
account. You owe me no thanks for it. I am pro- 
moting Captain Pershing, not because he is your 
son-in-law, but in spite of the row that relationship 
will stir up. You don't owe me a thing on account 
of it.' 

"Warren did not seem to like this, but it was the 
truth and there was no reason why it should be sugar- 
coated for him. However" (this with a laugh), "he 
did not oppose the appointment. 

"Time has proven that I was right. Mr. Wilson 
has proved it by his selection of Pershing, first for 
Mexico, and now to command the armies in France. 
Sims, of the navy, another man I was accused of 
favoring, Mr. Wilson has also chosen for important 
work, fairly good proof that my judgment of these 
men when they were juniors was sound." 

"But he has not approved of Wood," I suggested. 

"No, he has not. He has used Wood very badly 
and very unfairly. I might say he has also been very 
foolish in the way he has handled Wood. If he 
wanted to side-track him, he could have done it by 
sending him to Hawaii or the Philippines and leaving 
him there. But he did not have the courage to do 
this; he adopted halfway measures, and as a result, 
Wood has been like a sore thumb to him — always 



PERSHING AND WOOD 299 

in the way, and doing things so well that the public 
won't allow Mr. Wilson to forget him. 

"Wood is a good soldier, and a splendid organizer. 
So is Pershing. Pershing, in addition, is something 
of a courtier. Wood is not. Wood has been plain and 
outspoken and he's suffered for it. 

"Wood is a big man who can look on a problem 
from every angle. He makes few mistakes, but he's 
big enough, when he makes one, to admit the error, 
and he always has patience with the other fellow's 
opinion. 

" I am very fond of Wood, and I know he is of me, 
but in my years in the Presidency, Wood never took 
any advantage of our intimacy or in the slightest 
degree presumed on our friendship. If anything, he 
leaned backward in this respect." 



FONDNESS FOR THE KHAKI LAD 

JACK, I understand some of Pershing's wounded 
are here. I must see them." 

Wherever there were men from overseas — and 
in the early days of the war these were almost in- 
variably wounded or gassed — Colonel Roosevelt 
wanted to meet them. If they were on hand when he 
arrived, so much the better. If they were not, he 
would ask the local committee where they were to 
be seen. 

On trains and in other public places he would al- 
ways stop to greet them, and ask of their experiences, 
their commands, and how they were getting along. 
They were welcome, too, at Sagamore Hill. After 
the establishment of the great camps on Long Island 
he was at home to the "rookies" on Saturdays, and 
after a while a reception for them was a fixed feast 
each week. For them there would be refreshments, 
he had something to say to each of them, and glad 
to show all the famous "trophy room." 

Bluejackets, too, were as welcome as the men of 
the other arm of the service. The marvel of those 
meetings was the number of mutual acquaintances 
the Colonel and soldiers and sailors would discover. 



FONDNESS FOR THE KHAKI LAD 301 

"Colonel," a lad would say, "I am from Blank. 
John Smith there says to remember him to you." 

"That's splendid! Tell him I am very glad to hear 
from him. How did he ever come out with that mine 
of his?" 

Or it might be a request to be remembered to the 
village doctor or judge. He knew somebody in nearly 
every place they would mention. 

In Detroit a veteran boatswain, recalled from 
retirement to assist in recruiting, hailed the Colonel. 

"I'm mighty glad to see you again," exclaimed 
T. R. " Let me see, the last time I saw you, you were 
on top of a turret on a ship in Italian waters — you 
and two others. I '11 have your name in a moment — • 
is n't it Johnson?" 

"Yes, sir," said the proud sailor, swelling his chest 
a bit, "I was a bosun then." 

Johnson, by the way, was a navy character, 
known in the seven seas as "Steamboat" Johnson. 

"Steamboat Johnson — that bosun — is tickled 
to death at your remembering him," I said to the 
Colonel afterward. 

"That's it, 'Steamboat,' I knew he had some such 
outlandish moniker, as they might say in our be- 
loved New York. That helped me recall him. I re- 
member an officer explaining that he had amazing 
skill in handling steam launches; could do as much 



302 TALKS WITH T. R. 

with one as most good seamen could with a fair- 
sized tug. He 's a good sample of the old-time navy 
man. I believe he 's more than half glad of this war 

— it keeps him in the service." 

Once I spoke of the Saturday receptions at Saga- 
more Hill as a nice thing. 

"I'm glad to hear you say that," he answered. 
" I rather believe the boys enjoy it. I know I do. I 'm 
glad to have them come, and the obligation is all 
mine. If I can extend them any little courtesy I am 
glad to do it. It is no more than I would thank an- 
other man for doing for my boys. Mrs. Roosevelt 
feels about it just as I do — she's glad to have them 
come. 

"They won't let me go to war, but they cannot 
prevent my admiring those who are privileged to go 

— that, and minding the grandchildren." 

The grandchildren frequently took part in these 
festivities. Once little "Dick" Derby, baby son of 
the Colonel's younger daughter, Ethel, came out, 
and espying a flag proceeded to salute the colors in 
true man-of-warsman style. A group of bluejackets 
present applauded. 

"We start them young out here," said the de- 
lighted Colonel. 

It was on this occasion that the Colonel, showing 
his visitors through the "trophy room," called atten- 



FONDNESS FOR THE KHAKI LAD 303 

tion to an enormous pair of elephant tusks, said to 
be the largest in the world. 

"Those," said he, "were presented to me by the 
one man in the world fully satisfied with his ances- 

try." 

"Might I ask, sir," said a bluejacket, "who he 

might be?" 

"King Menelek of Abyssinia. You know he is 
said to have descended from King Solomon and the 
Queen of Sheba." 

The Colonel was In an especially jovial mood this 
particular afternoon, venturing to make what he 
seldom did — a pun — in showing a book Kaiser 
Wilhelm, in happier days, had sent him. 

"You see, gentlemen," said the Colonel, pointing 
to a grammatical error in the inscription, "the Kaiser 
did not know his English very well even then." 

Wilhelm had used "to" where he should have 
spelled it "too." 



ON BEING SIXTY 

COLONEL," I asked on the eve of his last birth- 
day, "how does it seem to be sixty — you know 
you will be sixty on Sunday?" 

"I do not know that it makes a bit of difference," 
he replied. "At any rate, I had not noticed any, or 
that I feel any different than when I was fifty-nine 
or fifty-seven." 

"You are looking well," I said. "I think I will 
emphasize that in my story of Sunday as sort of an 
answer to those who are spreading the report that 
you are a decrepit old man." 

"Do so, by all means," he said. "It might be of 
interest to say that this week I have been pulling a 
boat — Mrs. Roosevelt and I had a little picnic 
down at Lloyd's Neck one day this week. My boat 
is rather heavy and it is a good pull, but I did not 
notice that it affected me any. 

"A man should not be old at sixty if he takes 
reasonable care of himself. I would be all right if it 
were not that I have some reminders yet of that old 
Brazilian fever. It has come back at times in a very 
disagreeable sort of way. Aside from that I am all 
right. A man of sixty, though, should be in a position 



ON BEING SIXTY 305 

where he can take things easy — be in a position 
where he can do those things he may Hke to do and 
not be compelled to do a lot of other things that 
younger men can do as well. 

"If a man has done his duty, he will have his 
share of work done at that age, and ordinarily be in 
a position to retire. If he has not done his duty he 
may not be called upon to decide the question, for 
my experience has been that the man who does not 
do his work is the kind who abuses his health, and 
if alive, is not much good at sixty, or, for that matter, 
years before. 

"One cannot, however, lay down any general rule 
on that sort of thing. Some men do their best work 
at sixty or even later. It depends on the man and on 
circumstances that surround him or that may arise 
after he has thought his best work was behind 
him. 

"How old are you?" he suddenly asked. 

I told him. 

"You've got a long way ahead of you yet. You'll 
be in harness many years yet and won't want to 
think of retiring before you are sixty. Then you will 
probably insist on doing some work. You won't be so 
foolish as to wish to quit altogether even at what 
now seems to you to be a pretty good age for a news- 
paper man. The man who has been active all of his 



3o6 TALKS WITH T. R. 

life who, on a given date, arbitrarily shuts down, 
is inviting trouble for himself. By shutting down, he 
invites a breakdown. 

"Therefore the wise retains an interest in some 
worth-while things as long as he is able to." 



THE COLONEL AND THE TREATY 

THIS country must keep its absolute economic 
independence and raise or lower economic 
barriers as its interests demand, for we have to look 
out for the interests of our own workingman. 

"We must insist on the preservation of the Mon- 
roe Doctrine; we must keep the right to close the 
Panama Canal to our enemies in war-time; and we 
must not undertake to interfere in European, Asi- 
atic, or African matters with which we ought to have 
properly no concern." 

That was Colonel Roosevelt's position as to what 
the peace treaty should in part contain as expressed 
by him after Mr. Wilson had announced his inten- 
tion of going to Paris, but before he sailed. In this 
talk he covered the then nebulous field of treaty- 
making, and, as my notes show, strongly indicated 
that he foresaw the complications that arose in the 
Senate when the finished document was presented 
to that body for action. It was clear that he was not 
of those who approved of Mr. Wilson's plan to take 
part in the Peace Conference and he was very much 
of the opinion that a definite statement of his posi- 
tion was due the American people from Mr. Wilson. 

He also made it clear that he was fearful the now 



3o8 TALKS WITH T. R. 

almost forgotten "14 points" would be pressed to 
the disadvantage of our Allies. 

"President Wilson," he said, "has not given the 
slightest explanation of what his views are or why 
he is going abroad. He pleads for unity, but he him- 
self is responsible for any division among the Amer- 
ican people as regards the Peace Conference at this 
time. 

"He has never permitted the American people to 
pass on his peace proposals, nor has he ever made 
these propositions clear and straightforw^ard. 

"As for the '14 points,' so far as the American 
people have expressed any opinion upon them, it was 
on November 5 when they rejected them. 

"What Mr. Wilson says of these ' 14 points ' is sheer 
nonsense. He says the American army was fighting 
for them. Why, there was not one American soldier 
in a thousand that ever heard of them ! The Ameri- 
can army was fighting to smash Germany. The 
American people wanted Germany smashed. 

"The Allies have never accepted the ' 14 points.* 
The United States has never accepted them. Ger- 
many and Austria enthusiastically accepted them. 
Here certain individuals including President Wilson, 
Mr. Hearst, Mr. Viereck, as I understand it, and a 
number of pro-Germans and pacifists and interna- 
tional Socialists have accepted them; but neither 



THE COLONEL AND THE TREATY 309 

the American people nor the American Congress has 
accepted them. 

"Mr. Wilson himself has rejected at least one 
outright and has interpreted another in the directly 
opposite sense to its plain and obvious meaning. 

"The simple truth is that some of the * 14 points' 
are thoroughly mischievous under any interpreta- 
tion, and that most of the others are so vague and 
ambiguous that it is nonsense to try to do anything 
with them until they have been defined and made 
definite. 

" Inasmuch as Mr. Wilson is going over, it is ear- 
nestly to be hoped that it is his business not to try 
to be an umpire between our Allies and our enemies, 
but act loyally as one of the Allies. We have n't 
suffered anything like as much and we have not 
rendered as much service as the leading Allies. It 
is the British navy and the French, British, and 
Italian armies that have done most to bring about 
the downfall of Germany and therefore the safety 
of the United States. It is our business to stand by 
our Allies. 

"The British Empire imperatively needs the 
greatest navy in the world and this we should in- 
stantly concede. Our need for a great navy comes 
second to hers and we should have the second largest 
navy in the world. Similarly France needs greater 



3IO TALKS WITH T. R. 

military strength than we do, but we should have 
our young men trained to arms on the general lines 
of the Swiss system. 

"The phrase 'freedom of the seas* may mean 
anything or nothing. If it is to be interpreted as Ger- 
many interprets it, it is thoroughly mischievous. 
There must be no interpretation of the phrase that 
would prevent the English navy in the event of any 
future war from repeating the tremendous service 
it has rendered in this war. 

"The British must, of course, keep the colonies 
they have captured." 

Here the Colonel laid down his irreducible mini- 
mum of what the United States should insist upon 
printed above. 

"As for Mr. Wilson at the Peace Conference," 
he concluded, "it is his business to stand by France, 
England, and our other Allies and present with them 
a solid front to Germany." 



ENGLAND AND THE REST OF THE WORLD 

December 19, 1918 

Mr. Leary: 

Miss Strieker called up this morning to say that 
Colonel Roosevelt would like you to call on him to- 
morrow at II o'clock at the Roosevelt Hospital, and 
bring P. W. Wilson with you. He wants to talk over the 
article Mr. Wilson has in this morning's Tribune. If it 
can't be arranged for to-morrow morning, then Saturday 
morning will do. 

K. P. 

Mr. Wilson's telephone number is Bryant 145 1. 



This note was the prelude to one of the most im- 
portant, as well as one of the last, talks I had with 
Colonel Roosevelt. In it he made the flat assertion 
that it lay with the United States and England to 
preserve the peace of the world ; that he could foresee 
no reason why there should not be a general arbitra- 
tion treaty between the two countries, but that such 
a treaty could not with safety be made with Japan 
and perhaps not with Italy. 

"I see no reason — there Is no reason," said he, 
"why we should not have a general arbitration 
treaty with Great Britain. I could not, would not, 
have said that five years ago, but I can now conceive 
of no question that may arise between the two coun- 



312 TALKS WITH T. R. 

tries that cannot in safety and honor be left to arbi- 
tration. Working together they have the peace of the 
world in their hands. 

"I would not favor, I would not approve of such 
a treaty with Japan. It would be dangerous. Such a 
treaty with Italy might conceivably be dangerous. 
But in such a treaty with Great Britain there would 
be no danger to either party.'' 

Colonel Roosevelt had two things in mind in send- 
ing for Mr. Wilson — to show his appreciation of 
Wilson's Tribune article referred to in Miss Phelps's 
note, and to give him assistance in making America's 
position clear to his English readers. The article re- 
ferred to a meeting a few nights earlier of the so- 
called League of Small Nations to which Wilson had 
been bidden to speak. He went there expecting it to 
be, as the name indicated, a meeting in the interest 
of small nations. Instead, it was devoted mainly to 
demands for the independence of India and to gen- 
eral denunciation of all things English. Wilson, a 
former M.P., and a veteran of the press gallery at 
Westminster, took up the challenge, when it came 
his turn to speak, with the declaration: "I am an 
Englishman." Despite hisses he had his say, and with 
characteristic British doggedness, thereafter pur- 
sued his country's assailants through the press. 

Colonel Roosevelt had very little to say about this 



ENGLAND AND THE WORLD 313 

incident. Instead he plunged, almost immediately 
Wilson was introduced and he had apologized for 
having to receive him in a hospital, into the question 
of President Wilson's mission abroad and the way- 
matters were working out. 

"As an American," said he, "I am glad and proud 
of the reception given Mr. Wilson. I know, you know, 
it is to the President of the United States these hon- 
ors, these acclamations are given. As an American 
I am naturally gratified. But I very much fear that 
Mr. Wilson does not appreciate the fact that these 
honors, this wonderful welcome, are extended to 
President Wilson and not to Wilson the individual. 
There is danger in this to an egoist of the Wilson 
type. 

"The greatest danger, however, is that the people 
of England, the people of Europe, will take Mr. Wil- 
son at his own appraisal, at the value he sets upon 
himself, and ignore the sentiment of the Republican 
leaders, the Republican Senate, in the matter of a 
league of nations. They should realize that Mr. Wil- 
son may sell what he cannot deliver, may promise 
more than he can deliver. They should not forget 
that in the recent election Mr. Wilson, by demand- 
ing that the American people elect a Congress fa- 
vorable to him and his views, demanded, in effect, 
a vote of confidence, and that the American people. 



314 TALKS WITH T. R. 

by voting him a Republican House and a Republi- 
can Senate, gave him a vote of no confidence. 

"The vote was a repudiation of Mr. Wilson's de- 
sire to have a free hand, and should be, as it is, notice 
to the world, that there are other opinions and other 
persons to be considered — notice that any treaty 
Mr. Wilson may make will be and must be subject 
to scrutiny and examination, and, therefore, should 
be made with due regard to that provision in our 
Constitution giving the Senate coordinate power in 
treaty-making. 

"A league of nations per se may be a very desirable 
thing. It may be a very dangerous thing. It may be 
an instrument that will do the very thing it is de- 
signed to prevent — cause war and talk of war. 

" I see no reason — there is no reason — why we 
should not have a general arbitration treaty with 
Great Britain. I could not, would not have said that 
five years ago, but I can now conceive of no ques- 
tion that may arise between the two countries that 
cannot in safety be left to arbitration. Working to- 
gether they have the peace of the world in their 

hands. 

" I would not favor, I would not approve such a 
treaty with Japan. It would be dangerous. Such a 
treaty with Italy conceivably might be dangerous. 
But in such a treaty between the United States and 



ENGLAND AND THE WORLD 315 

Great Britain there would be no danger to either 
party. 

"We have a common language and common ideals. 
Our laws have the same common roots. There is no 
question on which we can well quarrel, for our inter- 
ests are alike. We have nothing England is likely to 
wish to take away from us, and I am sure we envy 
England possession of nothing she has. Her navy, 
great though it may be, is not a menace to our com- 
merce. In the years before we officially recognized 
the fact that Germany was making war upon us, it 
stood between us and the consequences of a policy 
of unpreparedness. Talk about freedom of the seas 
— the British Navy has kept them free. 

"A general arbitration treaty with Japan is im- 
possible. Every one who has given the subject care- 
ful thought knows that. At the moment we are at 
peace with Japan. To-morrow, the immigration 
question may bring us to the edge of war again. 

''That question, immigration, is one that we can- 
not and must not undertake to arbitrate. It would 
not arise with England. Your immigration here is 
small. It is furthermore a highly desirable immigra- 
tion. Japan's is not desirable and is not wanted. 
Nor can there be arbitration on internal matters 
including the tariff which is an internal matter 
and must be so considered. With Japan, however, 



3i6 TALKS WITH T. R. 

the danger at all times is immigration, and allied 
questions. 

"There is also objection to such a treaty with 
Italy. It is conceivable — in fact possible — that 
the time is not far distant when the United States 
may wish to limit or restrict immigration from Italy. 
I have the greatest respect for the Italian, but it is 
possible to get too much even of a good thing, and 
conceivable that the time will come when we will 
have all the undigested Italian immigration we may 
wish. Then we will wish to close the door. We could 
not and would not arbitrate that. 

"Therefore, a general arbitration agreement is not 
possible or desirable. An honest man will not make 
a contract he cannot keep. We are not yet, thank 
God, converted to the German idea that contracts 
are scraps of paper. 

"The only thing I can see that may make friction 
between the United States and Great Britain is the 
Irish question. That, however, is an internal ques- 
tion that England sooner or later must settle for her 
own comfort and convenience if nothing else. It is a 
matter that makes for trouble within the family — 
it is, as you know, a cause of annoyance and an issue 
of importance in Canada and Australia. Its clearing 
up will be welcomed by the Dominions, and, I be- 
lieve, by the people of England generally. They wish 



ENGLAND AND THE WORLD 317 

to do justice by Ireland. Eventually they will do 
so." 

The Colonel had prefaced this talk by a word as to 
his condition. He received us, seated in a great arm- 
chair, with a dressing-robe partly concealing, partly 
revealing, that, save for a coat, he was fully dressed. 
His color was good, his voice strong, his eye clear. 
The only indication other than his presence in a 
hospital that anything was wrong was a slight swell- 
ing in his right arm and hand. 

"I'm here," he said, "mainly because I don't 
happen to have a town house, and it is not at all easy 
for the doctor who wishes to keep an eye on this 
inflammatory rheumatism of mine to run out to 
Oyster Bay. They sort of like to have me here — at 
least they don't object to my presence, so I 'm here. 
I '11 leave in a few days now so as to be home for 
Christmas with the grandchildren." 

Leaving the hospital, Mr. Wilson, not exactly 
clear as to why Colonel Roosevelt had sent for him, 
asked what he should do. 

"I appreciate that I have been honored by Mr. 
Roosevelt," said he, "but I realize that he is far too 
busy a man to give up the large part of a morning 
to a visiting Englishman, merely for the sake of 
talking to him. Yet he was not talking for publica- 
tion; you know he stipulated that he was not being 



3i8 TALKS WITH T. R. 

interviewed and must not be quoted. He made it 
clear, however, that you know what he has in mind 
and that he relies on your having that thing done. 
Now: what did he have in mind?" 

"Two things," said I. "First, he's a splendid 
fighter and admires courage in others. In his sending 
for you on the strength of your melee with the 
League of Small Nations, one first-class fighting man 
was extending the right hand of fellowship to a kin- 
dred spirit, and as a mark of that fellowship and his 
appreciation giving you information that almost 
any American reporter I know of would risk his 
right eye to get. Second, and more important. 
Colonel Roosevelt recognizes the vast importance of 
getting the real situation in America, the real Amer- 
ican sentiment, before the English people. You are 
now in a position to state very clearly what the 
Republican attitude is and will be, for Colonel 
Roosevelt is to-day the head and the voice of the 
Republican Party and in all human probability, as 
matters now stand, will be the next President. 

"This talk leaves you in a position to say authori- 
tatively, and without fear of successful challenge, 
just where Roosevelt and those for whom he speaks 
do stand. In any event, you cannot now go wrong on 
any despatch involving this feature of the situation. 

"As you will soon be in London, it may be that 



ENGLAND AND THE WORLD 319 

you will wish to await your arrival there before 
writing anything. 

"In any event, you are in a position to tell the 
folks at home just how things stand here. If you 
write, you cannot, of course, quote Colonel Roose- 
velt. You may, however, say what 'friends of Colonel 
Roosevelt' say, or, 'persons in the confidence of 
Colonel Roosevelt say he feels or believes so and so.' 
That will be all right." 

On the following day I saw the Colonel again for a 
few minutes and told him what I had told Wilson. 

"Quite right," said he. "If he does that, he will 
help his people by giving them a real view of the way 
matters stand here, and that will help us. It is folly, 
almost criminal folly, to lead the people of Europe 
to expect the impossible. The awakening will be 
painful and the after effects bad, if they are led to 
believe we are prepared to surrender our nationality. 
We are nationalists, not internationalists, just as we 
are monogamists and not polygamists, and we love 
our country above all other countries. 

"Do you think Wilson clearly understood me?" 

I said I did. 

" I 'm glad of that. What these fool international- 
ists do not see is that there are things that cannot 
be arbitrated, and it's not wise or honest to agree to 
arbitrate where one knows non-arbitrable matters 



320 TALKS WITH T. R. 

are likely to arise. You've patiently sat through 
enough of my speeches to be reasonably familiar 
with my assertion that a man does not ask arbitra- 
tion when a blackguard slaps his wife's face. The 
Lord knows outsiders may think, after what has 
happened the last few years, that we are so gaited, 
but we are not. 

" I might have told Wilson that I am not concerned 
about the Anglo-Japanese alliance. It is of very lim- 
ited value to either nation, for it is an unnatural alli- 
ance. The real alliance, the alliance worth while, is 
where the parties' interests are common interests, 
where they think along the same broad lines and 
their aspirations do not conflict. Such an alliance 
need not be written, nor signed, nor sealed. It w^U 
stand on its own bottom and by its inherent strength. 
On the other hand, the written agreement, where 
these conditions do not attain, is never of lasting 
value. Can you imagine the English people siding 
with Japan against us? Neither can I. Nor can any 
other man that is sane and honest with himself and 
has any real knowledge of the English people. Even 
Hearst would have difficulty in imagining such a 
thing were he only approximately honest with him- 
self. 

"What I am afraid of is that this man Wilson will 
arouse hopes that never can be realized, and that the 



ENGLAND AND THE WORLD 321 

United States will suffer from the resentment that 
must follow. Then the very crowds that acclaim him 
now will rise up and damn him and us along with 
him, and we'll be left, as we were before we asserted 
our manhood and went into this war, the best-hated 
people in Europe. 

"Wilson is playing a dangerous game. He's play- 
ing diplomacy with the most skilled diplomatists. 
Just now he's got all the advantage. But he is in the 
position of the tenderfoot with money playing poker 
with professional gamblers. In the beginning he has 
the advantage of money, they of experience. In the 
end they have the money and he some experience. 
The difference is that In one case an Individual is 
gambling with his own, while in this case Mr. Wilson 
Is playing with other folks' chips. If my poker terms 
are bad, the other members of the Charley Thomp- 
son Finger Club will correct you. 

"They will play with Mr. Wilson. They will give 
him a grand time, and he will, unless I am greatly 
mistaken, give them promises the American people 
will not endorse. There will be delay and confusion 
and in the end the thing will have to be done right. 

"It is, of course, possible that anything Mr. 
Wilson agrees to may be ratified by the Senate. But 
it will only make for trouble, bitter trouble later on, 
if promises are made that we cannot keep." 



322 TALKS WITH T. R. 

On the death of Colonel Roosevelt I cabled Mr. 
Wilson in London advising him that in my opinion 
the time had come when he could tell the story of 
that Friday morning in Roosevelt Hospital. I believe 
he made some reference to the matter, but did not 
go into it in detail or at any considerable length. 

It is not good form for one newspaper man to ask 
another why he did or did not do a certain thing. 
Therefore I have never asked my friend Wilson 
"why." 

If, however, I were to guess, I would not hesitate 
to say the reason for the matter not being given in 
full to the people of England, and through them to 
all Europe, was that the then editor of the London 
News was and is of those who worship at the shrine 
of Woodrow Wilson and acclaim him as the long- 
awaited Messiah. 



MR. WILSON'S "IDEALS" 

IT is a mistake to speak of * Mr. Wilson's ideals ' 
or of Mr. Wilson as an idealist. He is merely a 
selfish, dishonest politician." 

Shortly before he died, while he was yet in Roose- 
velt Hospital under treatment for inflammatory 
rheumatism, Colonel Roosevelt so expressed himself 
in commenting upon news and editorial references 
to the President. Just before he died, on the Friday 
before in fact, he sent a letter to Ogden Mills Reid, 
proprietor of the New York Tribune, protesting in 
much the language quoted above against an edito- 
rial reference in Mr. Reid's paper to Mr. Wilson's 
idealism. 

The Colonel sent Mr. Reid, of whom he was very 
fond, a half -bantering sort of note describing himself 
as "A Constant Reader" who felt he must protest 
against misstatement of fact. The letter was dic- 
tated — the Colonel could not then use the pen and 
therefore signed and initialled by Miss Josephine M. 
Strieker to the end his secretary and most devoted 
follower. Mailed in New York City, it did not reach 
Mr. Reid until after the Colonel had died, and was, 
so to speak, a voice from the tomb. 

"Mr. Wilson never had an ideal in his life; he is 



324 TALKS WITH T. R. 

merely a selfish politician," was an assertion often 
made by him. "One of the difficulties in the present 
situation [the war and immediately thereafter] is 
that the man in the street does not readily awaken 
to this fact. Nor do many of the politicians. Mr. 
Wilson as a politician is the master of most of them, 
only they do not know it. They ascribe all of his 
success to luck. They do not realize that much of this 
that they call luck is mere opportunism on his part. 
In so far as a thing may serve his end, he is abso- 
lutely unscrupulous. 

"A case in point is this cry on which he was re- 
elected : ' He kept us out of war.' No one knew better 
than Mr. Wilson that Germany was at war on us 
and that under his direction we were backing into 
war stern foremost. It was a catch-cry, a cr>^ calcu- 
lated to attract the vote of the pacifists and the 
peace-at-any-price people. With its honesty, Mr. 
Wilson had no concern. His only interest was in the 
way it might work, might advance his political for- 
tunes. 

"He was as honest in this, however, as in his 
'strict accountability' notes. As Bryan is reported 
to have told Dumba, these notes were mainly in- 
tended for home consumption and were not to be 
taken too seriously in Berlin or Vienna. I honestly 
believe that Bryan gave that word to Dumba ex- 




THINKING IT OVER 



MR. WILSON'S IDEALS 2^5 

actly as he is understood to have done and that he 
was entirely honest in his statement, however doubt- 
ful the propriety of his so doing may have been." 

Colonel Roosevelt many times spoke with appre- 
hension of the effect Mr. Wilson's policy toward 
Germany would have on the rising generation. 

"To revert back a bit," he once said, "you spoke 
of your boy being a hero-worshipper. All real boys, 
all worth-while boys, are. Do you know that one of 
the regrettable things about this Administration, 
these four years of nightmare, is the possible effect 
on the boys now growing up. What inspiration is this 
man Wilson to any boy? What sort of a boy would 
he be hero to? What has he done, what can any man 
of his type do to inspire in any boy a love of country? 
What sort of a country would he leave a boy to be 
proud of and loyal to? That is one of the saddest 
things of the Administration. 

"Another thing, contempt for the man has in a 
way led to contempt for the office. Only the other 
day a gentleman spoke of hearing Wilson described 
in one of our best clubs in language rarely heard out- 
side of a bar-room. It was a shock to him. I was as 
thoroughly disliked while President as any man could 
be by certain elements that had a good reason for 
disliking me, but they did not hold me in contempt, 
and they did not hold my office in contempt." 



326 TALKS WITH T. R. 

Much as he disliked Mr. Wilson, and he was frank 
in saying, " I despise the man and dislike his policies 
to the point of hate," as he did in describing the so- 
called Gary dinner. Colonel Roosevelt never abused 
Mr. Wilson as an individual or referred to his acts 
as an individual. Gossip that was common property 
in Washington, and the clubs and newspaper offices 
of the country he never referred to, and those closest 
to him knew better than to bring them up. The 
Colonel was no gossip and no friend of gossipers. 
The nearest approach to reference to such matters, 
and one of the two instances I know of where he 
indicated that he had knowledge of this talk, was 
one day when he deprecated the manner in which 
political foes of Mr. Wilson were fighting him. 

"I am not at all interested in petty gossip," said 
he. " It is a waste of time. The way to fight this man 
is in the open, smashing him anywhere along the 
line that he leaves an opening. It is the only way to 
fight him. Were I a master of ridicule, which I am 
not, I would rejoice in the openings he gives. Invec- 
tive and abuse would be, as it nearly always is, a 
mistake. That is particularly true now, for people 
will resent much of that directed against the Presi- 
dent. That was not always the case when I was in 
the White House" (this with a grin), " but it is very 
much the case now. 



MR. WILSON'S IDEALS 327 

" In time Mr. Wilson will be the best-damned man 
in America since the days of James Buchanan and 
Andy Johnson, but that time is not now. When that 
time comes, I shall be sorry for Mr. Wilson. He, how- 
ever, will not be sorry for himself. He will figuratively 
gather his cloak about him and from his great height 
look down upon and be sorrowfully contemptuous 
of those pigmies of mortals unable to see things as 
he sees and has seen them. It will never occur to 
him that those who have ceased to acclaim him may 
by any chance be right and he be wrong." 

Just once, and once only, did I hear the Colonel 
use anything like profanity toward Mr. Wilson. This 
was on the morning the famous Zimmermann note 
was made public. The Colonel had not read the 
morning papers when N. A. Jennings, of the New 
York Herald, and I called on him in his suite in the 
Metropolitan Magazine offices. Jennings had an early 
edition of the Evening Sun which he laid on the 
Colonel's desk. The great black headlines caught his 
eye and he grabbed the paper to get the high points 
of the despatch. In an instant he was on the other 
side of the desk, crushing the paper in his rage and 
uttering words similar to those employed by the 
Father of his Country at the Battle of Monmouth. 

In another instant, he had recovered himself. 

" Boys," said he with a half smile, "I'm sorry, but 



328 TALKS WITH T. R. 

you have now heard some of the more or less — 
mostly less — justly famed Roosevelt profanity — 
some of the Roosevelt capacity to rage. I don't apolo- 
gize for it — this man is enough to make the saints, 
and the angels, yes, the apostles swear, and I would 
not blame them. My God, why don't he do some- 
thing? It is beyond me." 

"Oh, give him time," drawled Jennings. " In time 
he'll move. Everything will work out all right." 

"Work out all right, yes, it will work out all right; 
it will have to work out all right; the American 
people will make it work out all right; but, oh, the 
cost, in blood, in treasure, in suffering, this delay, 
this policy of writing notes and doing nothing must 
in the end involve!" 

At this meeting the Colonel declined to speak for 
publication, adding that he might say something 

later. 

"Just at this moment," said he, "I feel that it is 
best for me to say nothing. The facts are strong 
enough. Let them sink in. Then it may be time for 
me to talk." 

Vastly different was the reception the Colonel 
gave Mr. Wilson's appeal to the country for the elec- 
tion of a Democratic Congress in 191 8. The appeal, 
printed in the early afternoon papers, sent me hiking 
for Sagamore Hill. The Colonel met me on the piazza. 



MR. WILSON'S IDEALS 329 

" By Jove, Jack, I am glad to see you. It 's splendid 
of you to come. Yes, I 've seen that appeal to the 
country and I 'm just delighted. 

" I am as pleased as Punch. It is exactly as I would 
have ordered it. He gives me a splendid opening, 
and to-morrow I will send out the fighting part of 
my Carnegie Hall speech." 

For this meeting, called to ratify the Republican 
State and Congressional ticket. Colonel Roosevelt 
had prepared a set speech which was then in the 
hands of the press associations. Naturally it did not 
touch on Mr. Wilson's appeal. 

"We now see the real Mr. Wilson," he went on to 
say. "It's not a different Mr. Wilson than the one 
we have known, but not the Mr. Wilson he would 
have us know or that all of the people have known. 
Every one can now see Mr. Wilson the politician in 
all his nakedness and minus his camouflage. 

"It is regrettable that any American President 
should see fit to make such a lamentable exhibition 
of himself at a time like this. It is, however, fortu- 
nate in that it will show the country Mr. Wilson as 
he is — the real Mr. Wilson. 

"I shall certainly take advantage of this opening 
in my speech Monday. 

" Did I ever tell you the story of the New Bedford 
whaling captain who, when called to account for 



330 TALKS WITH T. R. 

knocking down the mate of another ship, explained 
that he did so because this man 'held himself so 
inviting'? Mr. Wilson has held himself very- inviting. 

" I shall, of course, try to be very careful and not 
to abuse or seem to abuse him, but I certainly am 
grateful for this opening. I am glad the real Mr. 
Wilson has revealed himself." 

"Colonel," I suggested, "I hope you will use that 
expression 'the real Mr. Wilson.'" 

"Exactly as I used your expression on dealing 
with Germany — 'compounding a felony.' By the 
way, I am very glad we agreed to leave politics out 
of that statement of October 13." 

This was a statement in which the Colonel had 
set out to advise all good Americans who felt as 
Senator Miles Poindexter spoke to vote the Re- 
publican ticket. This idea was abandoned on the 
ground that it left the way open to attack, and that 
in the course of the campaign a better opportunity 
for such an appeal would present itself. 

"To get back to the real Mr. Wilson," the Colonel 
went on, "I do not pretend to be able to predict 
what the people may do any more than I can predict 
the result of a great war, but I think the gentleman 
will find he has made a mistake. There is, however, 
no limit as to what he will do to get or retain power. 

" Do you know that they [the Democrats] are now 



MR. WILSON'S IDEALS 331 

organizing the various national elements in this 
country as units that may be as anti-American as 
they wish so long as they are Democrats? This 
Americanization Commission is working along those 
lines. They have n't exactly lined up the pro-Ger- 
mans yet, but they are getting around them via the 
Liberty loans. 

"You know that various of these foreign groups 
kept aloof from the Liberty loans in the early days 
of the war. Now they have found it a cheap way to 
become Americanized. They take one of these groups 
who happens to be a Democrat, place him promi- 
nently on a committee, and seek to round up his fel- 
lows through him. It is the opposite of what should 
be done. 

" But, I tell you, I 'm as pleased as Punch over this 
latest of Mr. Wilson's. There'll be lots of fun in the 
next two years." 

I told Charles T. White, of the Tribune, of the 
Colonel's intention of being conservative in his 
treatment of Mr. Wilson's appeal. After the meeting, 
White, a veteran of many a political campaign, came 
to me. 

" I thought you said Colonel Roosevelt was going 
to be conservative? Why, in a nice way, he called 
him everything but a dog- thief . I *m glad he was not 
radical if that's his idea of being conservative." 



222 TALKS WITH T. R. 

The Colonel laughed when I repeated this to him. 

"You may tell the Honorable Charlie White," 
said he, "that he's a good fellow and I like him, but 
that until this time I never suspected him of being a 
mind reader. He has gauged my sentiments exactly." 

These sentiments, Colonel Roosevelt had previ- 
ously told me, were best expressed in the conclusion 
of his Cooper Union address at the end of the 1916 
campaign. This was the famous "ghost speech." 
This speech he prepared, and for once reading an 
address did not seem to detract from its appeal. 
This, by the way, was read to as mixed an audience 
as one would ask to find, even in Cooper Union. 
Most of the seats were reserved and were filled by 
up town folk in evening clothes for the most part. 
The seats not claimed by the more well-to-do were 
taken by the East-Siders who habitually attend 
everything in Cooper Union. The result was, para- 
doxical as the statement may seem, an audience 
more representative of New York than one ordi- 
narily finds at a political meeting. 

Throughout the address the Colonel was fre- 
quently interrupted with cheers, but it was not until 
the close that the real demonstration came. As he 
swung into the last paragraph he threw his manu- 
script to the floor and amidst silence as nearly abso- 
lute as an orator ever gets (Colonel Roosevelt was 



MR. WILSON'S IDEALS ^33 

an orator that night at least) drew the final count in 
his indictment against Mr. Wilson. 

"Mr. Wilson," he began, ''now dwells at Shadow 
Lawn." 

In the press box one could almost feel the house 
pull itself together, sensing what was to come. 

"There should be shadows enough at Shadow 
Lawn," he went on, clipping off each word cleanly, 
as was his practice. "The shadows of men, women, 
and children who have risen from the ooze of the 
ocean bottom and from graves in foreign land. The 
shadows of the helpless whom Mr. Wilson did not 
dare protect lest he might have to face danger; the 
shadows of babies gasping pitifully as they sank 
under the waves; the shadows of women outraged 
and slain by bandits. 

"The shadows of Boyd and Adair and their brave 
troopers who lay in the Mexican desert, the black 
blood crusted around their mouths and their dim 
eyes looking upward because President Wilson had 
sent them to do a task and had then shamefully 
abandoned them to the mercy of the foes who know 
no mercy. 

"Those are the shadows proper for Shadow Lawn; 
the shadows of deeds that were never done; the 
shadows of brave words that were followed by no 
action; the shadows of the tortured dead." 



334 TALKS WITH T. R. 

With his final gesture the house was on its feet. 
It was storming the platform as he reached toward 
the exit, throwing himself through the group on the 
platform after the manner of the expert in such work 
and in a moment was on the sidewalk boarding the 
car that was to take him to another meeting on the 
East Side. 

Two years later I referred to this speech in the 
course of a chat, saying his close was quite the best j| 
thing I had ever heard him do. 

"Down front," said I, "you could almost see the 
ghosts rising at your call." 

"Yes?" he answered in query form. "Well, Mr. 
Wilson is not dead yet. He is a very fortunate man 
if he does not live to be tortured by many, many 
ghosts." 



I 



THE END 



I 



